Louise Pruitt. Wanda Keel. Eunice Brandt. Marge Holt. And me.
We weren’t an official committee. Nobody elected us. We were just the ones who showed up the first time somebody died. And then we kept showing up.
Through our own husbands’ funerals. Through each other’s husbands. Through every farmer and schoolteacher and baby this town lost.
Until showing up was just what we did. The way breathing is just what you do.
I should tell you how it started. Because it matters later.
Thirty-one years ago, my mother died in February.
It was a cold spell so hard that the frost had gone four feet into the ground. They had to break open her grave with a backhoe.
Forty people came back to the church basement after the graveside service. Half frozen. Shaking snow off their boots.
And there was nothing there.
Just one coffee urn that somebody’s daughter-in-law had thought to plug in.
