A true tale of love (and laundry) lost (and found)

http://ncronline.org/blogs/my-table-spread/true-tale-love-and-laundry-lost-and-found

I'm Catholic, but my oldest sister, well, she's an Edist. She believed, and believes, in Ed, her late husband.

When Ed died two years ago, she had his body cremated and kept the ashes. Some of them she scattered on a pond in Rocky Mountain National Park. Some of them she scattered in the Pacific Ocean along the Southern California coast. Some of them she had made into a necklace. My sister wears her husband everywhere. His ashes are in a clear, silver-rimmed orb that hangs from a silver chain around her neck.

After my sister had a heart attack, she went into the ICU. The bag containing clothes, shoes, reading glasses, Kindle and wristwatch, all the hopeful markers of her life, had to be taken home. No quick stent and out for my sister. She was intubated and sedated, and I flew out to California to be with her.

The day came when they started talking about taking out the breathing tube and the feeding tube. They would begin lightening the sedation, all in the hope that my sister would wake up and know us and know herself.