Even with IV lines taped to both arms, she never lost her sense of humor.
“The chaplain from the other hospital told me I should make peace with my life,” she said one afternoon, peeling the lid off a cup of applesauce. “I told him my life and I have never been at war. We’ve just had some disagreements.”
That was June.
She had always smiled, even when things around her were falling to pieces. I remembered her mother’s long illness during our junior year, how June would show up to school with her lunch made and her homework done and a joke ready for me, and only once, in the empty band room, did I see her cry. She’d made me swear never to tell anybody. I never had.
“Tell me about your wife,” she said one day.
I hadn’t expected it. I looked down at my hands.
“Carol. We were married thirty-one years. She passed nine years ago this June. Heart.”
