The Last Goodbye

August 10, 2026.

Some days arrive quietly, without warning, and still manage to divide your life into a before and an after. That morning, my niece called, her voice carrying the kind of gentleness people use when they are trying to soften something that cannot be softened.

“If you want to say your last goodbye, it’s time.”

They were increasing her meds. She was drifting, becoming less alert, slipping toward a place where I could not follow. I cried before I even stood up.

The drive to her house takes about twenty minutes, a familiar route I have traveled more times than I can count, yet that day it felt impossibly long. Every turn blurred behind tears I could not stop. I wasn’t crying because I didn’t want to go; I was crying because I already knew what waited for me at the end of that drive, the moment I had been dreading since cancer first entered our lives.

When I arrived, I stayed in my Jeep for a while, crying into my hands, trying to gather myself. I took several deep breaths, the kind that tremble on the way in and break on the way out. Eventually, I opened the door and walked to the back of the house. A few days earlier, on August 4th, she had smiled at me and said that I was one of the few people who came through the back door; I told her I was back‑door company, and we laughed. That memory stayed with me as I stepped inside.

Allen and Lynn were at the kitchen island, talking quietly. Lynn, her friend and nurse, looked up first. I didn’t even try to hold myself together; the tears came again, heavy and helpless. Allen wrapped me in a hug, steadying me just enough to breathe.

I asked where she was.

“In the living room,” Lynn said. “She might be sleeping, but if you touch her, she will wake.”

I walked slowly, trying to steady my breath, trying to be calm for her. When I turned the corner and saw her lying in the hospital bed, her eyes closed, her body so small against the white sheets, something inside me cracked.

I went to her side and rubbed her arm, whispering her name.

She opened her eyes immediately.

Even half‑awake, even exhausted, she knew me. She saw me. She shifted slightly, moving just enough to pat the bed beside her, inviting me to sit. That simple gesture, so familiar, so her, undid me completely.

I sat down and the tears came harder. I hugged her. I kissed her face. I held her cheeks in my hands the way you hold something sacred. I told her how much I love her, how I didn’t know how to move forward without her, how she had always been my constant. And even then, even in her final days, she comforted me.

I felt guilty for that, guilty that she was the one soothing me when I should have been the one holding her up. But that was Linda. She loved instinctively, fiercely, without hesitation. She told me it was going to be okay. Her voice was soft, tired, but still hers.

We stayed like that for a long time, her head against mine, our tears mixing, our breaths uneven. I wiped her face, then mine. She was so tired. I gave her a sip of water, holding the cup to her lips.

My niece came in then, asking if she was ready for her meds. She had been down by the lake with the others, spending time with family, trying to hold on to moments of normalcy in a week that was anything but normal. They all knew the weight of what was happening inside the house; they were carrying their own grief, their own fear, their own heartbreak. We were all living the same sorrow, just in different rooms.

It was strange to see her so weak. Just days earlier, on August 4th, she had been herself. When I left that day, she ended up in the kitchen helping cook dinner, moving with that familiar spark that made us believe we had more time.

But on August 10th, time had shifted.

She was fading. And I was sitting beside her, holding her hand, trying to memorize every detail, the warmth of her skin, the shape of her smile, the way her eyes still softened when she looked at me.

This was my last goodbye.

A goodbye made of whispered love and trembling breath. A goodbye stitched from decades of sisterhood. A goodbye I will carry for the rest of my life, like a piece of stained glass, fragile, luminous, and forever part of the window of who I am.

The Reading

A few days later, my niece asked if I would do a reading at the funeral. Her voice held both trust and sorrow. I felt honored, and frightened. I prepared; I practiced; I read the passage aloud to myself again and again, trying to steady my voice, trying to make peace with the idea of standing before everyone in the church.

I chose Wisdom of Solomon 4:7–14. The passage speaks of a life completed not by length of years, but by depth of goodness; of a soul made perfect in a short time; of someone taken early because their spirit was already whole. It felt fitting. It felt like her.

When the priest called out for the first reading, I didn’t hear him at first. I was sitting there in a kind of trance, held still by grief, suspended between memory and reality. He called again, more clearly this time, and the sound finally reached me. I stood and walked toward the lectern, each step feeling distant, as though I were moving through water.

When I began to read, everything blurred. My voice shook; my breath caught; I wept trying to get the words out. It was one of the most difficult moments of my life, standing there in front of everyone, trying to honor her with a voice that kept breaking. But I did it. For her.

How I Carry Her Now

I carry her in the quiet moments, in the way I open a door, in the way I laugh, in the way I protect the people I love. I carry her in the strength she taught me, in the softness she allowed me, in the stubbornness she modeled so well. I carry her in every decision where I pause and think, what would Linda tell me to do.

She is the stained glass in my chest, the colors of my childhood, the brightness of my adulthood, the soft pink light of survival, the deep blues of grief. She is the panel that will never be removed, never replaced, never dimmed.

I carry her in the way I move forward, not because I know how, but because she told me I could.

And I will carry her for all my days.