At My Husband’s Funeral, I Placed a Rose in His Hands and Discovered the Note He Never Got to Give Me

I am fifty-five years old, and I am learning how to say a sentence I never expected to speak this soon.

I don’t have a husband anymore.

For most of my adult life, the word husband meant Greg. It meant a familiar voice in the next room, a steady presence in the passenger seat, a hand at the small of …