One fist held my phone.
The other held the final thing Gertrude had chosen to give me.
When the room became quiet again, the nurse asked whether there was anyone she could call.
I looked down at Christopher’s name on my screen.
Thirty missed attempts from me.
Nothing from him.
“No,” I said. “There isn’t.”
I signed the first forms before midnight.
There were questions about burial, cremation, personal belongings, and who had legal authority to make decisions.
Each question felt like a door Christopher should have walked through.
He never did.
I gave the staff the information I knew from years of filling out Gertrude’s paperwork.
Her birth date.
Her medication list.
Her preferred funeral home.
The name of the church she had stopped attending when the steps became too hard.
The phone number of the friend who still mailed her a Christmas card every year.
