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When I told you your wife was dying, I was thinking of chairs.
Wooden ones.
Like the ones in my college dorm room.
Hours to days
maybe days to weeks,
that’s what I told you.
Because doctors are notoriously bad at predicting.
A week later when your wife stopped
waking up, you cried in front of me.
My chin trembled,
but the chairs were there
so phenomenally ordinary, mundane even.
I wish I had better news,
I said.
I wish statements we call them
because saying you’re sorry implies culpability.
Two weeks in, I sat with you and looked
through every photo on your phone.
I saw your wedding, your dog.
She was beautiful.
Is. She is beautiful.
And so it goes that soon every day I wake
up to her and
go to sleep to her.
And my friends are asking
if this is healthy, if it’s ok.
And I try to find my chairs.
Wooden ones.
Like the ones in my college dorm room.
But instead you are there
and she is there
and the tears are there.
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Reiff, S. Terminal. J GEN INTERN MED 34, 163 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-018-4699-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-018-4699-9