The Character Loft

Tell us why you should be panicking. And then panic.

Karen isn't one to panic. Not after more than 20 years as a cop and almost 10 years as a mother; between those two things she's learned to live under pressure. Things that would make most women panic cause Karen Donahue only a mild state of unrest.

And then there's this afternoon.

It hits her out of the blue, as she's walking through her living room cleaning up a few out of place random things. She's left a message for her boyfriend to see if he wants to get together tonight, their last before her son will be home and her evenings will involve ice cream and bedtime stories. As she waits for him to call, she realizes that she hasn't thought about Chris once today.

For the first time since his passing, she's thinking more about the man she's dating than her late husband.

That's never happened before, and it fills her with a sudden panic as she sits on her couch, inadvertently eyeing the wedding photo still on her living room mantel. She doesn't know what to do with it, the excitement of truly being in love with someone combined with the fear that she might forget the only man she's ever loved before. She's never been able to reconcile it, the deep and singular love she has for her husband and her son versus her honest desire to someday be someone else's wife and the mother of someone else's child.

And it paralyzes her momentarily, until she hears the phone ring in the kitchen and gets up to see who it might be.

Life goes on. It has to. And for the first time, she wants it to.

Karen Donahue | OC