My Husband Cooked Dinner, and Minutes After My Son and I Ate, We Both Collapsed. I Played Dead on the Floor and Heard Him on the Phone: “Soon They’ll Both Be Gone”

So did I.

There were sounds that undid us both for a while — a sudden slam of a car door, the particular hum of a refrigerator in a quiet room.

But he was here, and breathing, and sleeping down the hall where I could hear him, and every single morning that he woke up was a morning Christopher had been certain would never come.

I held onto that.