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      Chapter One

      I am not a sentimental guy. I’ve been known to forget Mother’s Day and, once, when Hannah and I were dating, I even let Valentine’s go unnoticed. Fortunately she didn’t take my lapse too seriously or see it as any reflection of my feelings. As for anniversaries and birthdays, I’m a lost cause. In fact, I’d probably overlook Christmas if it wasn’t for all the hoopla. It’s not that I’m self-absorbed…Well, maybe I am, but aren’t we all to a certain extent?

      To me, paying a lot of attention to people because it’s their birthday or some made-up holiday is ridiculous. When you love someone, you need to show that love each and every day. Why wait for a certain time of year to bring your wife flowers? Action really does speak louder than words, especially if it’s a loving deed, something you do for no particular reason. Except that you want to. Because you care.

      Hannah taught me that. Hannah. A year ago today, May eighth, I lost her, my beautiful thirty-six-year-old wife. Even now, a whole year after her death, I can’t think of her without my gut twisting into knots.

      A year. Three hundred and sixty-five lonely days and empty nights.

      A few days after her death, I stood over Hannah’s casket and watched as it was lowered into the ground. I threw the first shovelful of dirt into her grave. I’ll never forget that sound. The hollow sound of earth hitting the coffin’s gleaming surface.

      Not an hour passes that I don’t remember Hannah. Actually, that’s an improvement. In those first few months, I couldn’t keep her out of my head for more than a minute. Everything I saw or heard reminded me of Hannah.

      To simply say I loved her would diminish the depth of my feelings. In every way she completed me. Without her, my world is bleak and colorless and a thousand other adjectives that don’t begin to describe the emptiness I’ve felt since she’s been gone.

      I talk to her constantly. I suppose I shouldn’t tell people that. We’ve had this ongoing one-sided conversation from the moment she smiled up at me one last time and surrendered her spirit to God.

      So, here I am a year later, pretending to enjoy the Seattle Mariners’ baseball game when all I can think about is my wife. My one-year-dead wife.

      Ritchie, Hannah’s brother and my best friend, invited me to share box seats for this game. I’m not fooled. I’m well aware that my brother-in-law didn’t include me out of some mistaken belief that I’m an inveterate baseball fan. He knows exactly what anniversary this is.

      I might not be sentimental, but this is one day I can’t forget.

      As a physician, a pediatrician, I’m familiar with death. I’ve witnessed it far too often and it’s never easy, especially with children. Even when the end is peaceful and serene as it was with Hannah, I feel I’ve been cheated, that I’ve lost.

      As a teenager I was involved in sports. I played football in the fall, basketball in winter and baseball in the spring, and worked as a lifeguard during the summers. The competitive spirit is a natural part of who I am. I don’t like to lose, and death, my adversary, doesn’t play fair. Death took Hannah from me, from all of us, too early. She was the most vibrant, joyful, loving woman I have ever known. I’ve been floundering ever since.

      Although I’ve fought death, my enemy, from the day I became a doctor—it’s why I became a doctor—I learned to understand it in a different, more complex way. I learned death can be a friend even while it’s the enemy. As she lay dying, Hannah, who loved me so completely and knew me so well, showed me that ultimate truth.

      A year’s time has given me the perspective to realize I did my wife a disservice. My biggest regret is that I refused to accept the fact that she was dying. As a result I held on to her far longer than I should have. I refused to relinquish her when she was ready to leave me. Selfishly, I couldn’t bear to let her go.

      Even when she’d drifted into unconsciousness I sat by her bedside night and day, unable to believe that there wouldn’t be a miracle. It’s stupid; as a medical professional I certainly know better. Yet I clung to her. Now I realize that my stubbornness, my unwillingness to release her to God, held back her spirit. Tied her to earth. To me.

      When I recognized the futility of it all, when I saw what I was doing to Hannah’s parents and to Ritchie, I knew I had to let her go. I left Hannah’s room and got hold of myself. I hadn’t slept in days, hadn’t eaten. Nor had I shaved, which means I probably looked even more pathetic than I felt. I went back to our home, showered, forced down a bowl of soup and slept for three uninterrupted hours. When I returned, the immediate family had gathered around her bedside. Hannah’s heart rate had slowed and it was only a matter of minutes. Then, just before she died, she opened her eyes, looked directly at me and smiled. I held her hand and raised it to my lips as she closed her eyes and was…gone.

      That last