It isn’t violent.
There is no thunder, no dramatic sky, no sense that the weather itself understands something terrible has happenedIt simply falls slowly and steadily, soaking into your coat, your hair, and the spaces inside your mind where thoughts have become too exhausting to finish.
That was the kind of rain falling the day I buried my husband.Terrence Washington died on a Tuesday at 4:47 in the morning.
I remember the exact time because I was holding his hand when it happened.
There was a clock on the wall of his hospital room, and for some reason I stared directly at it.
Maybe because when your entire life is coming apart, your mind searches for one solid fact it can hold onto.
4:47.
Sixth floor.
Pale green walls.
A window facing the parking garage.
Terrence’s hand inside mine.
I had been a nurse for nine years.I had sat beside dying patients more times than I could count.
I knew what the monitors meant.
I knew how breathing changed.
I knew what happened clinically when a life ended.
None of that knowledge helped when the person in the bed was my husband.
Afterward, the staff gave me a few minutes alone with him.I expected to collapse.
Instead, I sat completely still.
I held his hand and whispered,
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do without you.”
At the time, I thought I was talking about grief.
Within twenty-four hours, I would discover that I also had a much more practical problem.I met Terrence four years earlier while working nights in the oncology department.
He wasn’t a patient.
His father was.
One Thursday at two in the morning, I found Terrence sitting alone in the hallway outside his father’s room.
He had the look of a man who had already been there for hours and would remain there for as many more as necessary.
I brought him coffee from behind the nurses’ station.
Not because it was my job.
Because the vending-machine coffee was awful, and he looked like someone who needed something warm.I met Terrence four years earlier while working nights in the oncology department.
He wasn’t a patient.
His father was.
One Thursday at two in the morning, I found Terrence sitting alone in the hallway outside his father’s room.
He had the look of a man who had already been there for hours and would remain there for as many more as necessary.
I brought him coffee from behind the nurses’ station.
Not because it was my job.
Because the vending-machine coffee was awful, and he looked like someone who needed something warm.He looked up.
“Thank you.”
“Room 614 usually means a long night,” I said.
“I know.”
“The coffee downstairs is terrible.”
“I noticed.”
He smiled.
That was how we began.
Before I became involved with Terrence, I knew only one thing about the Washington
