I am Amelia, thirty-five years old, and today I buried my husband, James, in soil that wasn’t ours.
After thirty sleepless hours of transit, my body felt less like flesh and bone and more like a collection of aches held together by grief. The flight from Singapore had been a marathon of turbulence and suppressed sobbing, a journey that
stretched across time zones and oceans, pulling me further away from the only person who made the world make sense.
As the wheels of the plane screeched against the tarmac of Portland International Airport, I turned on my phone. The screen glowed with the indifference of modern technology. I opened our family group chat, my fingers trembling not from
the cold, but from a desperate, childlike need for comfort.
Flight lands at 5:00 p.m. Can someone pick me up?
I watched the three dots dance on the screen.
Troy, my brother: We’re swamped. Try Uber. Mom: Why didn’t you plan this better? You know how busy Tuesdays are.
I stared at the words until they blurred. Plan better. As if I had scheduled my husband’s
brain aneurysm. As if his death were a calendar conflict I had failed to resolve.
With a heart that was silently collapsing into dust, I typed back: No worries.
I had no idea that within twenty-four hours, my family would be watching the consequences of those texts unfold on the evening news.
Before the Nightmare
Before the disaster, James and I lived
a life that felt charmed. We met sophomore year of college when he spilled a venti latte onto my economics textbook. He insisted on buying me a new one and, with a crooked smile that would eventually become my favorite sight in the world, managed to turn a disaster into a dinner date. We built a life in Portland, a cozy two-story house with a garden
where I grew tomatoes James swore could win ribbons at the State Fair.
Ten years. We had ten years of Thursday game nights, of saving for a future that seemed guaranteed, of talking about the nursery we would paint yellow.
Then came the contract. Six months in Singapore. It was the opportunity of a lifetime for a software engineer. We were ecstatic.
I remember the night before he left—the candlelight flickering on his face, his hand covering mine. “Six months will fly by,” he promised. “Then, the next chapter begins.”
And then, the call. The headache. The collapse. The coma.
I flew to Singapore, but I was chasing a ghost. James never woke up. He was thirty-seven.
I navigated a foreign medical system
