But the pauses got longer.
The breathlessness got worse.
And one afternoon, after a doctor’s visit he insisted I skip, he came home with paperwork in his hands and the kind of silence that has teeth.
Hospice arrived two months later.
I watched the strongest person I’d ever known begin to fade, inch by inch. The house filled with quiet voices, soft footsteps, and the steady beep of machines that made my stomach clench.
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.
