Seventy-two years. It sounds impossible when you say it out loud, like a story someone else lived. But it was ours.
That is what I kept thinking as I watched his casket, hands folded tight in my lap.
It’s just that you spend that many birthdays and winters and ordinary Tuesdays with a person, you start to believe you know the sound of every sigh, every footstep, and every silence.
It sounds impossible when you say it out loud.