I kissed my wife goodbye in her coffin—then found a navy button in her hand that belonged to my brother, and everything changed

like saints.

“When I die,” she’d once told me, “don’t make me look like a statue. I was a woman, not a decoration.”

And yet one of her hands had been placed carefully across her chest.

The other was clenched tight.

Too tight.

I leaned closer and reached for it.

“Don’t disturb her,” my mother said.

Not a request.

An order.

I looked at her across the coffin.

“She’s continue reading …