Message your family first. Call your wife. Tell them, she’s gone.
Sit vigil by her bedside until your brother arrives. Her brother brings espresso; her sister brings a cake. They had promised her something with flavor, near the end. Her brother touches a cup to her lips.
Go to her house. Start to assess what needs to be done: estate sale, house cleaning, realtor. Spend an hour or two catching her cats.
Collect her ashes from the funeral home.
Go to dinner with your family. She would have liked that. Order tequila shots all around; she would have liked that, too.
“She didn’t want a funeral,” her sister says. Try not to hate yourself for being relieved.
Swallow your tequila. Start planning something else: a vacation, maybe, to scatter her ashes somewhere she loved.
