In those last weeks, Graham tried to be the same. He teased me. He complained about the hospital food even though he wasn’t eating. He told me I needed to stop letting the neighbor’s cat flirt with me from the porch like I was “some kind of Disney princess.”
But sometimes, when he thought I was asleep, I heard him whispering.
Not to anyone in the room.
To someone he missed.
And then—just like that—he was gone.
The funeral was a blur of black clothing and casseroles and people telling me, He was a good man.
I wanted to scream, You don’t know what he was to me.
After everyone left, the house felt wrong. Too still. Like the walls were holding their breath.
I sat in my wheelchair in the living room, staring at the armchair where he used to sit, the fabric slightly worn where his elbow always rested.
