My Husband Made His Doctor Promise to Give Me an Envelope Only After He Was Gone

He did not want me sitting at this same table months later, grieving and holding a newborn, trying to untangle accounts and documents I did not understand.

He did not want a court dispute.

He did not want anyone questioning whether his decisions had been made freely, of his own will.

And, I would soon read, he especially did not want anyone suggesting that I had pressured him into any of it.

He had used some of his last strength, some of the precious little energy his illness had left him, not on himself, not on comfort, but on paperwork — on the deeply unromantic, profoundly loving work of making sure that his death would not become one more burden heaped on top of my grief.

I had thought the arranging was mysterious.