I barely made it through the service that day.
Harold and I had been married for 62 years. We met when I was 18 and married within the year. Our lives had become so intertwined that standing in that church without him felt less like grief and more like trying to breathe with half a lung.
Harold and I had been married for 62 years.
My name is Rosa, and for six decades, Harold was the steadiest thing in it. Our sons stood close on either side of me, and I held their arms as we got through it.
People were filing out when I saw her. A girl, 12 or 13 at most, who didn’t belong to any face I recognized. She moved through the thinning crowd, and when her eyes landed on me, she came straight over.
“Are you Harold’s wife?” she asked.
“I am.”
She held out a plain white envelope. “Your husband… he asked me to give this to you on this day. At his funeral. He said I had to wait until this exact day.”
