I don’t know how I’d react if I were suddenly confronted with the skull of someone I once cared for. Like – if I were just chatting with my friend, joking about who those bones in the graveyard might belong to and then someone held up a skull and said, “This skull belonged to Kate – your old pre-school teacher and first theatre mentor.”
First – I’d be upset to know she was dead but also – the instant shift from the abstract to the deeply personal would be quite dramatic. I feel like it would be suddenly sobering and also instantly captivating. I’d search in my memory for what she actually was like and then try to reconcile my memory with the skull before me.