Living

I’m staring at the screen. This is the fifth time the error message has insisted my dead husband is alive.

Status: Widow

Relationship to the two children: Parent

Their relationship to each other: Brother/Sister

Is their another parent living outside the home: No

WRONG

Wrong?

I retrace my steps.

We’re sitting in our bedroom, his neck swelling for the second time. His lung rattles when he sleeps. Again. It’s back. It hasn’t been six months.

We’re at Stanford, land of mahogany walls and harps literally playing in the fucking hallway. There are two donor matches. It’s too late. He should give up. Would you like to make a donation? Would you like to go fuck yourself?

I’m watching him breathe, not breathe, drown in the cancer. I watch the last and only easy breath he’s had in months as his eyes meet mine for goodbye.

I’m in a room picking out a tiny box, and in a church, and surrounded by people, and he is gone. His bits and pieces reduced to the contents of a tiny box that lives on a grassy hill in a hole I wanted desperately to fall into with him.

Is there another parent living outside the home?

No.