I pointed to the first line and asked what the relationship was supposed to mean. The funeral director said it was written by the person who arranged the service, and then showed me the signature underneath. It was my husband’s handwriting. The name beside it was a woman I’d never heard of, and the relationship he’d written was not “friend” or “coworker.” It said “wife.” I asked her to turn the page. There were forty-one names, and beside several of them were notes about who had been invited, who had brought flowers, and who had been asked not to speak to the family. My name wasn’t anywhere.
The funeral director looked uncomfortable and said the service had been private. My husband had paid the balance himself and had specifically asked that no notice be sent to our home. I asked who the woman was. She checked the file and told me the deceased had been using our address for correspondence. Then she showed me the death certificate. The woman had died in 2019, and under surviving spouse there was my husband’s full name. I told her my husband had been alive, married to me, and living in our house that entire year. She went back into the file and found a second document that had been added after the service.
It was a handwritten letter from my husband requesting that the woman’s belongings be released to him. The funeral director said he’d collected a small box from the service himself. I asked what was inside. She said photographs, several letters, and a child’s birth certificate. Then she gave me the name of the child. It was a name I’d heard once before — because it was written on an emergency contact form my husband had filled out for someone else. I drove home with a copy of the guest book in my purse, and when I walked through the door, my husband was standing in the hallway holding the same photograph I’d just seen in the funeral home’s file.
