That was the moment I knew your mother had succeeded.
She raised someone who would sit beside a stranger simply because no one else would.
I pressed the note against my chest.
But there was one final line.
Now stop hiding among dying people, Sarah.
Go live among the living.
Six months later, I finally returned to college.
I still volunteered at the hospital, but no longer every night.
I started meeting friends again.
I moved my mother’s untouched coffee mug from beside the sink and placed it carefully in a cabinet.
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And once a week, I worked with Thomas’s foundation.
Sometimes all we provided was a taxi.
Sometimes groceries.
Sometimes a hotel room.
But whenever possible, I sat down with the person first.
Years have passed since then.
I still wear Thomas’s simple silver ring on a chain around my neck.
People occasionally ask about it.
I tell them I was married once.
For seven days.
To a seventy-nine-year-old man who taught me something I had spent months refusing to understand.
Thomas hadn’t asked me to marry him because he needed someone beside him when he died.
He asked because he wanted me to discover that I was still capable of loving someone after losing the person I loved most.
I thought I had married a lonely stranger so he wouldn’t die alone.
Only after he was gone did I understand the truth.
Thomas had made sure I wouldn’t have to live alone with my grief.
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And sometimes the people who stay in our lives for the shortest time leave behind the longest echoes.
