Keep his jacket.
Keep his mug.
Keep every photograph exactly where it was.
But Mark was asking for something harder.
He was asking me to let memory move.
He wanted our daughter to hear stories about him while eating breakfast, while riding in the car, while doing the ordinary things he had dreamed of doing beside her.
He wanted her to know that he had talked to her before she was born.
He wanted her to know that he had rested his hand on my stomach and waited for her movements like they were messages meant only for him.
He wanted her to know that he had loved her before seeing her face.
I folded the letter against my chest and cried until the nursery went blurry.
Then I noticed one final paragraph.
Mark had written about the donation.
He said he did not want me to think of those papers as something I had allowed doctors to take from him.
