Every signature felt like another confirmation that he was really gone — that this was real, that it was final, that I was doing the paperwork of my husband’s death.

But I remembered what he had told me on the porch. If I can’t watch her grow up, maybe I can at least make sure somebody else gets more time with theirs. And so I signed.

Even though every stroke of the pen caused me a pain I did not know a body could hold.

Even though a selfish, grief-mad part of me wanted to refuse, to keep every last part of him, to let nothing more of Mark leave the world than had already left it.

I signed, because it was what he wanted, because he had asked me plainly and I had promised, and because honoring the wishes of the dead is one of the last acts of love available to the living.

I thought, as I set down the pen, that this was the final thing I would ever have to do for my husband.