Vitamins for the Afterlife

The morning after the funeral, Maya found herself staring at the Tuesday organizer pillbox — the one he'd never see again. His daily multivitamin sat in the little compartment shaped like the letter T, a lonely orange oval that looked absurdly cheerful.

She should have cried. Instead, she'd dry-swallowed it herself. His vitamins wouldn't go to waste.

The apartment was too quiet without Barnaby, their elderly golden retriever who'd passed three months before him. People kept telling her it was good she didn't have the dog to worry about now, as if grief were something you could conveniently schedule. As if loss took turns instead of arriving in a stampede.

Her iPhone lit up on the counter — her sister asking if she'd eaten. Maya didn't respond. What could she say? That she'd spent two hours watching water boil for tea she never poured? That she'd found his old baseball glove in the closet and pressed it to her face, inhaling leather and dust and the memory of him explaining the infield fly rule on their third date, both of them slightly drunk and completely captivated?

They'd met at a pickup game in Central Park. She'd been terrible, and he'd admired her terrible form anyway.

"You swing like you mean it," he'd said afterward, over lemonades that were melting too fast in the July heat. "That counts for something."

Everything counted for something then. Now she was thirty-five and widowed, and the only thing that seemed to count was showing up to work on Monday and remembering to pay bills and occasionally remembering to drink water because dehydration was easy when you didn't care much about staying alive.

The vitamin sat heavy in her stomach, a small rebellion against the void.

Her phone lit up again. A notification: monthly vitamin subscription shipped. She'd forgotten to cancel it.

Maya laughed, really laughed, for the first time in weeks. The universe had a dark sense of humor. She'd receive his vitamins for months to come, little orange reminders that she was still here, still taking nourishment, still — somehow — moving forward even when forward felt impossible.

She texted her sister back: *I'm eating. I promise.*

Then she poured herself a glass of water and watched it catch the morning light, determined to notice beautiful things again. He would have wanted that.