And he said, “I’ve been in a lot of hospitals,” and changed the subject, and I thought he meant as a patient.
He asked me to read to him.
Not a book — the notebook, it turns out, though I didn’t know that then; he asked me to read him the newspaper, the whole thing, including the classifieds, and when I asked why the classifieds he said, “Because somebody wrote every one of those and they’re all trying to say something true in eleven words.”
Somebody wrote every one of those.
On Friday he stopped talking much.
On Saturday he held my hand with a grip that frightened me and said one full sentence, which was: “Don’t do this too long, Willa. Do it a while and then have a life.”
And on Sunday, at 6:20 in the evening, with a nurse named Cordelia at the door and me in the chair, his heart stopped.
