My husband, Max, died at 12:44 p.m. on a sunny Saturday in May, surrounded by friends and family in the living room of our Sacramento home. His last breaths were labored. He lay on a narrow hospital bed, his emaciated body propped up to face the patio doors so he could feel the warmth of the sun.<\/p>\n
I held his hand gently\u2014gently because it felt like all bone, not the hand that had held mine with such strength for the past five years\u2014and read from the Twenty-third Psalm. \u201cHe makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters….\u201d<\/p>\n
A lovely melody suffused the room. Tones so resonant and deep, they could have been coming from one of Max\u2019s classical CDs. I turned and saw the heavy wind chimes over the patio swaying. But the air was still. Not a breath of wind at all. There was no breath from Max either. His hand fell from mine. He was gone.<\/p>\n
In late November, Max had received the diagnosis: esophageal cancer, late stage. He didn\u2019t want to die in a hospital. We\u2019d made him as comfortable as we could at home.<\/p>\n
We\u2019d sit overlooking our yard and talk. About Tanner, my son from my first marriage, whom Max treated as his own. About music, good food and wine, philosophy\u2014his passions. About the trips we\u2019d taken, like the one to Auberge du Soleil, a resort in Napa Valley, where he\u2019d first told me he loved me. These things were easier to talk about than the future.<\/p>\n
I was 53. I\u2019d thought we\u2019d grow old together. Now? \u201cIt\u2019s easier for me,\u201d Max said one day. \u201cIt will be harder for you because you are being left behind.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know what I\u2019ll do,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will still be here,\u201d he insisted. \u201cMy love will never die. It\u2019s immutable.\u201d<\/p>\n
What did Max mean? He\u2019d never talked like that. I was the daughter of a Presbyterian minister, but Max was an agnostic. The Twenty-third Psalm was music to him, not Scripture. The idea that anything but a memory of someone could survive death didn\u2019t appeal to his sense of reason.<\/p>\n
I couldn\u2019t fault him for it. His intellectual rigor was one thing that had attracted me to him.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d met Max in 1999, a year and a half after I\u2019d moved to Sacramento to become the publisher of the Sacramento Bee, <\/em>one of California\u2019s largest and most respected newspapers. I was divorced, with a nine-year-old son. I didn\u2019t have time for love.<\/p>\n Then Max invited me to a meet-and-greet event held by the political-consulting firm he worked for. I declined\u2014obvious conflict of interest for the newspaper\u2014 but agreed to a friendly lunch.<\/p>\n He was a true Renaissance man: an Air Force vet, a mathematician, an accomplished chef, a former college weight lifter. He played trumpet and piano and had even written his own symphony. He read at least a book a week. He astonished me.<\/p>\n Eight months later, we were married. Max, Tanner and I built a home together, a life. Two weeks before our fourth wedding anniversary, we discovered that that life was nearing an end.<\/p>\n In his final months, Max spent a great deal of time with our friend and his caretaker, Helen. He\u2019d insisted that I continue working, so Helen was there when I couldn\u2019t be.<\/p>\n One day she revealed the strangest thing. The two of them were in the kitchen when there was a brief sun shower. \u201cWe both stopped and looked,\u201d Helen said. \u201cI told him, \u2018I know you don\u2019t believe in God, but this is something God created for us today. If you can find a way, let us know that there\u2019s something out there, that it doesn\u2019t just end.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI will,\u201d Max said. \u201cBut it will be up to you two to see it.\u201d<\/p>\n Max said that? I believed in heaven, as my father had understood it, a faraway place filled with love. Max never did. But the nearer death drew, the more cautiously open he became to the notion that there could be more, as if a force stronger than his reason were reaching through to him. He spoke with less certainty about the end. The day before he died, weak and fading, he asked for directions. \u201cWhere, Max?\u201d I asked, confused. \u201cTo the place I\u2019m going,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n The afternoon Max died, some friends took Tanner. I waited for the funeral-home staff. I retreated to the master bedroom to try to compose myself. I flipped on the light, but the bulb above the sink had burned out. \u201cI thought these things were supposed to last forever,\u201d I grumbled.<\/p>\n We held Max\u2019s funeral at a church in downtown Sacramento. A friend conducted the service, and people filled the pews. Tanner and the other pallbearers carried Max\u2019s coffin to the front of the sanctuary. I was set to follow behind with my brother and sister-in-law. Will I make it through this? <\/em>I wondered. Will I fall apart?<\/em><\/p>\n Suddenly a sound boomed through the sanctuary. A heavy door to an anteroom had slammed shut. No one was near it. It shocked me out of the downward spiral I was in.<\/p>\n Only back home did I think about the music of the chimes on that windless afternoon. The burned-out bulb. The slamming door. What was going on? The newspaperwoman in me said, \u201cNothing at all.\u201d A flying bird could have brushed the chimes. We hadn\u2019t changed the bathroom bulb since we\u2019d moved in. A draft in the church could be strong enough to slam the heavy door. Max was logical to a fault. He\u2019d guffaw at \u201csigns\u201d like these.<\/p>\n It was grief that made me notice more little things. Lights flickering when it wasn\u2019t even stormy. Noises coming from the guest bedroom, where Max had slept for most of the last month. One morning, I returned home after taking our yellow Lab for a walk, and glanced up at the large clock over our fireplace. It should have read eight o\u2019clock. Instead, the hands had stopped\u2014at 12:44.<\/p>\n Father\u2019s Day. Tanner was with his dad. I was home alone, listening to Celine Dion\u2019s \u201cBecause You Loved Me,\u201d the song we\u2019d played at Max\u2019s funeral. I felt agitated. I wandered into the library, full of Max\u2019s books. I randomly pulled one from the shelf. An envelope fell to the floor. On the front was a woman\u2019s handwriting. It was a card from Max\u2019s mother, from Father\u2019s Day the year before. \u201cI\u2019ve never seen you this happy in your life,\u201d she\u2019d written. \u201cIt\u2019s because you have a family.\u201d<\/p>\n I could explain any one of these things, but all of them together? I decided to keep a list of every odd incident, weird feeling and comforting coincidence. Maybe if I saw everything on paper, I\u2019d begin to make sense of it.<\/p>\n I gave away most of Max\u2019s possessions, because that was what he wanted, but it felt like giving away parts of him. His albums and books I donated to the library. His clothes and shoes I gave to Goodwill, saving a few favorite ties and shirts for Tanner. The least important things were the hardest to deal with. His round tortoiseshell glasses, his worn black leather wallet, a tiny hairbrush that he used every morning. They seemed to bear his imprint, his touch. I was beginning to forget what it felt like back when his hands were still strong, when he held mine in his.<\/p>\n Tanner and I didn\u2019t plan anything for the first anniversary of Max\u2019s death. Just a quiet day at home. We sat at a table in the backyard; I caught up on work, Tanner read a book. After a while I went inside to make us a snack. On the way to the kitchen, I paused at the doorway of the guest-bedroom suite. Something drew me inside. I turned toward the bathroom and flipped on the light.<\/p>\n On the mirror was a handprint.<\/p>\n It was no ordinary handprint. Not something revealed by the steam of a shower or left behind by someone\u2019s greasy fingers. It was made of a soft, powdery substance and perfectly formed: I could see every fingerprint, every crease, the life line and love line. It showed all the facets of bone structure, like an X-ray. I\u2019d combed my hair in front of that mirror just hours before. The hand hadn\u2019t been there.<\/p>\n I shouted for Tanner. He came running. \u201cWhat\u2019s wrong, Mom?\u201d He saw it too. It wasn\u2019t just my imagination.<\/p>\n \u201cYou didn\u2019t do this, did you?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n \u201cNo,\u201d he said. He held his hand up to the mirror, so small in comparison. \u201cWhere did it come from?\u201d<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t have an answer, any reasonable explanation. But I knew whose hand it was. The same hand I\u2019d held a year earlier, except this was the way I preferred to remember it. The hand that had once pressed the keys of a piano and thumbed through the books in our library. Max\u2019s hand.<\/p>\n I got my camera and took a picture, afraid the image would fade. But it didn\u2019t. It remained until that Wednesday, when Helen came to clean the house. \u201cDo you want me to leave it there?\u201d she asked, astounded.<\/p>\n I did, but it was time to say goodbye. Max had already given me enough to hold on to. Just as he\u2019d promised\u2014if only we were willing to see.<\/p>\n