Chapter 9 — Quietly, in His Sleep

Julian passed away quietly in his sleep, near the end of those six weeks, on an ordinary gray morning, with no drama and no final scene, simply slipping away in the night the way the gentlest deaths come.

A nurse called to tell me.

I had seen him just the day before; he had been tired, more tired than usual, but he had held my hand and smiled his shining smile and told me, as he often did now, that I had made him happier than he had any right to be.

I had not known it was goodbye.