I found out in a parking lot.
And the thing I could not get past — the thing that put me in a volunteer training class eleven weeks later — was not that she’d d*ed. It was that a stranger did the last thing for her, and that I would never be able to thank that stranger, and that somewhere out there was a woman who had held my mother’s hand and gone home and made dinner.
So for almost a year, I spent time with patients who had no family beside them during their final days.
That’s how Alden came into my life.
He was seventy-two, frail, and dy*ng from heart failure.
He always looked exhausted, but somehow he still smiled gently whenever I came to see him.
We began talking.
And within just a few days, our conversations became something both of us looked forward to.
He asked good questions.
