Last Monday had been such a perfect day. Sunny, warm, just a bit windy. She and Will had spent the entire day outside with the kids. They had hiked, played catch and soccer. And then they had built a bonfire and roasted hot dogs for supper. That was how they lived. Together, with hardly ever a fight. They laughed so much.

And here it was, Saturday. Cold, rainy, gray. And they were about to put her husband in the ground. He had died Wednesday in a car accident. He had been on the phone with her when the tractor trailer had started crossing over the median towards him. She had heard the panic in his voice. Nina had heard his tires screaming as Will tried to stop. But it was no use, on that narrow stretch of interstate at rush hour, there was no place to go. The doctors told her that he died on impact. But she knew that he had been afraid, she’d heard it. She would always hear it. She had not been able to sleep and she dreaded the rest of her life without him and the pain of half of her very soul being gone. She wanted to climb into the grave and be done with it all.

Then she looked down at her three children and realized that she couldn’t let herself die too. She had to live… if only so they wouldn’t lose both of their parents. But she had no idea how she could do it. How she could possibly be a single parent to an eight year old, a seven year old and a five year old. Nina scooped up her little girl, took her son’s hand and led the way back to a life she had no idea how to live.




The sun shone warmly down on her as she sat by Will’s grave. It was hard to believe that three years to the day had passed. His face was still fresh in her mind. The way he giggled when he was teasing her. She smiled and lay her head down on the soft grass. With a deep breath, she let herself doze off.

When she woke thirty minutes later she felt refreshed. She looked at her watch and saw that it was time to go pick the kids up from their play date. Nina had promised that they could buy some flowers and place them on his grave. She had come early to have some privacy as she grieved. She hated for the kids to see her cry. Sometimes she cried because there was no way to stop the tears from falling. But not usually. It had even gotten to where in the past year she would go for a week or two without crying and four or five days without remembering. She sometimes felt disloyal when that happened. Maybe she shouldn’t, she thought with a shrug of her shoulders, but that was how she felt. She stood up and stretched her arms to the sky and said goodbye. Then she walked the short distance to the gold mini-van that Will had bought for her just two months before he died and left to get back to the busy life that brought her comfort.