At My Husband’s Funeral, I Opened His Casket to Place a Flower — and Found a Crumpled Note Tucked Under His Hands

So I did the only thing I could.

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I turned and walked out.

I’d never read them.

***

After the burial, the house felt like a stranger’s.

His shoes were still by the door. His mug on the counter. His glasses on the nightstand.

I sat on the edge of our bed and stared at the closet shelf.

Eleven journals in a neat row. Greg’s handwriting on the spines.

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“Helps me think,” he’d say.

I’d never read them. It felt like opening his head.

I pulled down the first journal and opened it.

But Susan’s words were echoing: “Two. A boy and a girl.”

I pulled down the first journal and opened it.

The first entry was a week after our wedding. He wrote about our terrible honeymoon motel. The broken air conditioner. My laugh.

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I flipped through the pages.

Page after page about us.

He wrote about our first fertility appointment. Me crying in the car.

He wrote, “I wish I could trade bodies with her and take this pain.”

I went to the next journal. Then the next. Page after page about us. About our fights. Our inside jokes. My migraines. His fear of flying. Holidays. Bills.

No mention of another woman.