She believed her grandmother deserved to have the news of her death received whole, without panic and without softening the edges. “Was she in pain?” Katie asked hoarsely. “No. She was under deep anesthesia. She didn’t feel anything.”
“Her heart stopped at 9:45. We worked on her for twelve minutes, but I’m sorry—we couldn’t bring her back.” After asking for ten minutes alone, Katie went into the room and sat down beside the bed.
She took her grandmother’s hand, still faintly warm, and studied her face. The wit, the tenderness, the stubbornness—all of it had been wiped away at once, leaving only complete stillness. “I’ll do everything the way you asked, Grandma. I will,” she whispered, then stepped back into the hallway and called her father.
“Dad, Grandma died,” she said in a voice that sounded cracked and unfamiliar to her own ears. She was surprised by how easily the sentence came out, without making her collapse on the spot. “Okay, got it,” Michael said after a heavy pause. “Let’s deal with everything tomorrow, all right?”
“Figure out the funeral stuff, what things cost, who needs to be called.” “Dad, you couldn’t even come. You could at least say you’re sorry.”
“Katie, don’t start, okay? You work in medicine. You see death all the time. You’re better at this than I am. What do you want me to do, sit in the hallway and fall apart?”
The call lasted less than a minute. Katie took a screenshot of it, put the phone away, and called her mother. “Mom, Grandma’s gone.” “Oh Lord,” her mother exhaled. “Well… maybe it’s a mercy, Katie.”
“She’d been sick so long.” “No, Mom. This complication happened in a matter of hours. She was on her feet until the very last day, do you understand?”
“I didn’t know. Let’s talk tomorrow, okay? It’s late. I’m exhausted.” The line went quiet, and back in her apartment Katie sat at the kitchen table under the weak light above the stove for a long time.
She made a list of tasks instead of crying. Her father’s morning call caught her already dressed. “Katie, listen, can you just handle the funeral arrangements?”
“Work is slammed. I can’t get away. You’re right there in town, so it makes more sense for you.” “Dad, I work too. Back-to-back shifts.”
“Then do it on your breaks. You’re local. You’ve got this.” She went to see Eugene Carter, the broad-shouldered funeral home director who had a habit of rolling a pencil between his fingers while choosing his words.
In his office, which smelled of fresh print ink and candle wax, a dusty ficus sat dying beside a church calendar. It looked like it hadn’t seen water since summer. Carter spread several pages across the desk, all covered in her grandmother’s neat, unmistakable handwriting.
“Your grandmother arranged everything herself,” he said in a low voice. “Plot, service, flowers—the whole thing. All I have to do is carry it out.” Katie stared at the perfectly straight lines of writing.
The sheer practicality of it finally brought the lump to her throat that she had held back all night. “Will your parents be helping at all?” Eugene asked carefully. “My father thinks because I work with dying people, I should handle it.”
Carter rolled the pencil again and looked at her over his glasses with the sad wisdom of a man who had seen too much. “Kid, I’ve been in this business more than twenty years. And you know what I’ve learned?”..
