Knowing did not make my hands move.

Patrick and I had made a promise many years earlier.

Whoever died first would have their ashes scattered beneath the old willow beside Lake Minnetonka, where we had first met as teenagers.

We had made the promise lightly at first.

Later, after other losses taught us that such conversations mattered, we repeated it more seriously.

Neither of us had imagined I would be deciding how to carry it out while also trying to find a missing phone and understand a daughter’s hurried account of his final days.

I looked at the urn each morning.