Two years ago, I was thirty-four years old, working as a nursing assistant in a quiet long-term care facility when I met Edith.
She was eighty-two. Blunt. Strong-willed. Somehow capable of making even the gloomiest hallway feel a little brighter just by being awake in it.
Most residents looked forward to visits from children, grandchildren, old friends. Edith waited for no one. No family ever came. No birthday cards arrived. No phone ever rang for her.
Gradually, without either of us quite noticing when it happened, I became the person she counted on. Every morning I brought her tea, the way she liked it, no matter how many times she pretended to complain about the temperature. After my shifts ended, I’d sit beside her bed while she told stories from a lifetime most people around her had already forgotten. Before long, she didn’t feel like a patient anymore. She felt like family.
There was one mystery, though, I could never solve.
Wherever Edith went, an old, faded hospital bag went with her. The fabric had worn thin from years of use. The zipper barely worked anymore. But she guarded that bag like it held her entire world inside it.
Whenever a nurse tried to move it while changing her room or making her bed, Edith reached for it instantly and pulled it back into her lap. She never once explained why.
Then one afternoon, during another hospital admission, she asked me to sit beside her bed. She took my hand gently. Her tired eyes searched mine for a long moment before she finally spoke.
“I have one last favor to ask.” She smiled, sad around the edges. “It may sound strange… but I don’t have much time left. I’ve spent so many years alone. I don’t want to leave this world without knowing what it feels like to have someone I can call my husband.”
