Only I came to my husband’s funeral.
Not our son, not our daughter, not a single grandchild. Just me, a seventy-nine-year-old woman in a black coat, standing beside his coffin while the cold October wind whipped through the chapel courtyard as if even the weather couldn’t bear to stay.
The funeral director kept glancing at the empty rows of chairs, then at me, like maybe I’d snap my fingers and conjure a family. He cleared his throat once, then again, shuffling the little program booklets in his hands.
“Would you like us to wait a few more minutes, Mrs. Holloway?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “Start. George would’ve hated a delay.”
My husband was punctual even in his last days. Pills by the clock. Evening news at six sharp. Slippers folded neatly side by side before bed. A man of habit, a man of dignity.
Now, a man laid to rest alone.
I took the front row. They’d set out five chairs in the first line, as if someone still believed my children would rush in at the last second, breathless and apologetic. I sat in the middle and left the others empty.
The pastor recited scripture without conviction, like he’d said the same words over too many coffins to remember they were supposed to mean something. The flowers were too bright, the casket too polished. I kept thinking how George would’ve laughed at the fuss, then scanned the room for Peter or Celia, frowning, asking where the hell the kids were.
Where were they?
My phone had chimed that morning with a text from our son.
Sorry, Mom. Something came up. Can’t make it.
No explanation. No call. Just a flat sentence on a glowing screen.
I could see him as I read it—Peter in his pressed shirt, on a golf course or in some conference room, half listening to a client and half pretending this day wasn’t happening. Pretending his father’s death was just a small, inconvenient line item in his week.
Our daughter, Celia, hadn’t messaged at all that morning.
She’d left a voicemail two days earlier, breezy as a spring wind.
“Mom, I really can’t cancel my nail appointment, and you know how anxious I get with reschedules. Tell Dad I’ll visit him next week, okay? Love you. Gotta run.”
Next week.
As if dead men wait.
The service ended quicker than it should have. Without family, there isn’t much to stretch. No grandchildren singing off-key hymns, no eulogies that wander. Just the pastor, the funeral director, and me.
After the final “Amen,” I rose alone and walked behind the pallbearers as they wheeled the coffin to the hearse. The chapel doors thumped shut behind us. The October wind caught my coat, slid under my collar, crept into my bones.
I didn’t cry.
Not because I wasn’t grieving; I’d been grieving for months, long before George took his last breath. But there’s a kind of sorrow so deep it stops needing tears. It sits inside you like an anchor, heavy and unmoving. That day, I was already buried under it.
At the cemetery, the groundskeeper watched from a distance, both hands resting on a spade, cap tipped low. No mourners in black, no cluster of cars, no low murmur of family reunions happening over the grave of a shared ghost. Just me, the pastor, two men lowering the coffin, and the old man with the shovel.
The prayers were short and thin. Dust met wood. Wood met silence.
I stayed after the others left. My heels sank slightly into the earth. The temporary plaque, just a metal rectangle on a stick, gleamed dully in the gray light.
GEORGE HOLLOWAY
BELOVED HUSBAND, FATHER
They didn’t write the last word I heard echoing in my mind.
Forgotten.
I added it silently and let it sit there like a stone in my shoe.
The Quiet House
Back home, the quiet roared.
His recliner sat untouched, cushion bowed in the shape of his body. His slippers were still side by side under the coffee table. The TV remote lay exactly where he’d placed it the last night he watched the local news and complained about the weather man.
I stood in the doorway, hands on the frame, and stared at that stupid remote until the edges blurred.
Then I turned away, went to the kitchen, opened a bottle of wine I’d been “saving for guests” for the last ten years, and poured myself a glass.
“Guests,” I muttered.
I took out my phone. I don’t often scroll, but something in me wanted the confirmation. Proof that I wasn’t crazy, that my children really had chosen to be somewhere else.
Celia’s Instagram was public, of course. My daughter had always liked an audience.
Two hours earlier, she’d posted a picture: her and three girlfriends at a sleek restaurant, glasses raised, sunlight bouncing off crystal and hair dye.
Caption: Girls’ brunch. Bottomless mimosas. Living our best lives.
George’s funeral had been ninety minutes long.
Peter’s profile showed a different scene. Ninth hole at some manicured course, his new driver glinting in the sun.
Caption: Killer swing. Perfect weather. Deals made.
I stared at the screen until the letters swam, then shut off the phone so I wouldn’t hurl it into the sink.
On the wall across from the table hung a framed photograph—George and me on our fortieth anniversary, standing beside the rose bushes he’d planted with his own hands. The blooms had been red enough to hurt your eyes. We’d both been smiling.
Those same bushes now sagged outside the kitchen window, petals gone, stems bare, as if they’d given up blooming when he did.
“Tomorrow,” I said aloud. “Tomorrow I’ll call the lawyer.”
I lifted my glass in the direction of the dusty roses.
“If I was the only one to send you off, George,” I said quietly, “then I’ll be the only one to carry out your last will… and theirs.”
I drank to that. The wine burned less than I expected.
The Estate Folder
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