He was forty-seven.
By the time I got to Erie Shores Regional Hospital, forty minutes away through a summer storm, he was already gone.
His mother, Jeanette, and his brother, Ted, were standing in the hallway.
Ted held out a clear plastic bag with a wallet and a phone in it.
“That’s everything,” he said.
I did not notice, then, that the watch wasn’t there.
I did not notice anything.
When I did, a week later, Ted said it must have been lost in the chaos.
Then Neal was gone, and my entire world changed.
Our house on Meadow Lane seemed enormous and painfully quiet.
His favorite chair remained beside the living room window.
His canvas jacket still hung exactly where he had left it, with a marina key tag in the pocket that I couldn’t bring myself to take out.
His paycheck stopped.
His company health insurance stopped.
