The Flowers He Sent Before Goodbye

Chapter 1: Cancer Win

Two days after my partner’s funeral, someone knocked on the door.

I was sitting on the kitchen floor when it happened. Not because I had fallen, and not because I was searching for anything. I had simply opened the cupboard to get a glass, seen his favorite coffee mug on the bottom shelf, and discovered that standing had become too difficult.

The mug was dark blue, with a thin crack running through its handle. I had tried to throw it away twice. Both times, he had rescued it from the trash.

“It still works,” he would say.

“It’s a mug, not a loyal employee.”

“That mug has been with me longer than you have.”

“And yet I’m the one who makes your coffee.”

He would grin and hold it against his chest as if I had threatened a member of the family.

Now it sat in the cupboard beside mine, waiting for a morning that would never come.

The knock sounded again.