I Spent Nearly Two Weeks Recovering From Surgery and My Husband Never Visited Once—Then I Came Home and Froze at the Front Door

It became:

Emma’s bear.

Objects can be released from old meanings.

So can people.

PART 64 — NURSE BRENDA RETIRES

Several years later, I learned through a hospital newsletter that Brenda retired.

I mailed her a note.

You sat beside me when the chair that should have held my husband was empty. I have never forgotten that.

She wrote back:

That is what chairs are for. Somebody should sit in them.