"Victory in an empty room" We bickered for decades. I argued that she didn't know how to save money, that she didn't cook right, didn't raise the children right, and was always ruining everything. Every one of our arguments was a battle in which I had to emerge the winner. I would pound my fist on the table and demand that everything be done "my way," the right way. I believed I was teaching her about life. Then she died. Quietly, without finishing an argument with me over some petty, idiotic dispute about a light left on. Now I sit in this kitchen. Everything is in perfect order. Everything is exactly as I wanted it. The light is off. No one is wasting a single penny, no one is arguing with me, no one is preventing me from being "right." I won this war. But looking at her empty chair, forty times a day I ask myself the same question: "What for?" Why did I need that victory in an argument about the color of the curtains or an extra hundred spent, when now I would give the rest of my life just to hear her voice, even if she said again that I was wrong about everything.