They Held My Funeral While I Was Still Breathing. Then My Seven-Year-Old Nephew Looked Into the Coffin and Said, “Mommy, Aunt Madelyn Is Looking at Me”

It was my necklace — the fine gold chain with the small heart pendant that my grandmother had fastened around my neck on my fifteenth birthday, and that I had not taken off since.

“Gwen, please, don’t upset yourself,” Christopher was saying, in the gentle voice he used on everyone.

“Madelyn told me more than once that if anything ever happened to her, she wanted Delilah to have this.

It’s what she’d want.”

My mother’s voice broke into sobs.

“She never took that necklace off.

Not even to sleep.”

“Which is exactly why it shouldn’t sit in a drawer in the dark,” he said.