Until I knew you were gone that day, we were still together. Until I knew, you still had time to patch the driveway, change the lightbulbs I couldn’t reach, paint the foyer, see the kids graduate, make a success of yourself.

We fought that morning, in whispered hisses in the bathroom, you spitting toothpaste when you said “please shut up,” the white foam ringing your mouth and flecking my legs as I sat on the toilet peeing, and I hated how you drew out the “please” so long that it was almost funny, but it didn’t take the sting off the other two words, in fact it made them hurt more.

You said I needed to get off your back, you would have another job by next month. And I stopped myself from saying I’ll get off your back when you get off your back, because I figured when I came home from work you’d be in bed asleep again or lying on the sofa watching reruns of SNL. But you knew I couldn’t resist a great comeback, so even though I didn’t say it, you heard it from that part of you that knows me the way I know you.

You weren’t looking at me then, but I kept staring at you, and I could see your hair curling around your ear like it sometimes did and I thought how funny it was that when I was falling in love with you I would play with that curl, smoothing it over and over, loving that curl and loving you, but when I’m angry, that curl makes me mad. I hate it, and I hate you.

After I showered and dressed for work I came down and you’d made breakfast for everyone, mini waffles for Elaine and cereal for Tony and scrambled eggs for us, and the kids were laughing and you said, “I’ll drop them off,” and you seemed like your old self so I mouthed “thanks” over their heads because you really could be sweet sometimes and I guess it wasn’t totally your fault that all of a sudden I was responsible for the mortgage and getting the brakes fixed and paying for summer camp for two tweens and knowing that we couldn’t take that vacation we’d planned.

On my way home from work I stopped at Harris Teeter to get ingredients for tres leches cake – you didn’t know how easy it was to make, so you were always giddy about having it, and you would eat two servings for dessert and have two more with your coffee in the morning – but I promised myself I would only make it if you’d done something about a job and if you were standing upright when I got home, not on the sofa or in bed.

You weren’t home when I got there, and the kids said they got a ride home from school with the neighbor, and I pictured you in a suit at an interview shaking hands with your new boss, and then coming home to tell me we could have our vacation after all.

But you didn’t come home, not in time for dinner, so we ate without you and I did homework with the kids and got them to bed and you still hadn’t answered my texts or called. I made your cake to push back the worry and called Katie who started contacting police departments and hospitals and found you before they found me.

She didn’t phone, she came over, so I knew it was bad when I answered the door, and my sister hugged me tight and put her forehead on mine and whispered what happened, my second painful whisper that day.

Katie stayed with me that night and spooned me while I cried, me shoving my face into a pillow so I wouldn’t wake the kids, who slept as if they still had a father. When I used the bathroom I cried even harder because that was the last time we talked, and Katie put her mouth right next to the door jamb and spoke low and quiet, pushing her words through the sliver of space to soothe me. “Mary, it’s going to be okay, it’ll be okay, shh, we’ll figure everything out.”

But I, broken, said “Katie, we had a fight right here in this bathroom this morning and I was so mean. He was, too, but now he’s dead and we can never fix it.”

“So he wins,” we both said, and we laughed a quick death laugh, Katie on her side of the door and me on the toilet without toothpaste flecks on my legs. You would have laughed with us.

The next day, after the children were told and held in long weeping hugs and welcomed sadly at the neighbor’s, Katie drove us downtown and picked out your casket and said when we’d have your wake and kept asking, “Is that okay, Mary? Did you want something different?” And I nodded yes, it was okay, and shook my head no, I didn’t want anything different.

The funeral home lady was looking at me all soft and sorrowful, and she seemed so nice that I leaned toward her and said, “Could you do something for me? Near his right ear, could you make sure his hair curls like this?”

And I showed her what I wanted for you on my hair, near my ear, and she said yes, honey, yes, we can do that.