Are you ready? You are? Super!

Go to the grocery store!!!

Are you so excited? Listen. If I know you, there are dead veggies in the bottom drawer turning into green ooze. The milk is the consistency of cottage cheese. There are moldy leftovers and cold cuts that smell like feet. There’s plenty of food, but you’re not eating. You’ve barely left the house since I died. So go on! Take a shower! Shave. Brush your teeth. Go to the grocery store and stop eating food from cartons over the sink. Don’t be a loser!

I love you. I love you. I love you.

You can do this. You sort of have to. As the great Morgan Freeman once said, get busy living, or get busy dying.

Love, Lauren

“Don’t you Shawshank me,” he said, and he laughed, the sound rough and foreign.

Suddenly elated, he jumped from the couch. His wife had given him a chore, and he was going to do it. What was the weather like? Warm, right—Sarah had opened the windows. Was it Saturday? Could he go to the farmers’ market with Pebbles? Where was his phone so he could see the date?

First things first, clean out the fridge. Milk, lumpy and disgusting. In fact, all dairy products, see ya. Gross turkey slices—God, the smell. She was right. Some of the food he’d ordered and stuck in the fridge, some Tupperware containers of food from Sumi Kim, all of it way too old or mysterious. He filled the trash bag in record time.

Lauren was right about the vegetables. Those had been bought when she was still alive. When eating leafy greens was supposed to boost her immune system. “Fuck you,” he told the slimy spinach and liquefied zucchini. He opened the cupboard and saw the giant container of turmeric, supposedly so good for health. The vitamins and Chinese supplements. The lies, the hope.

None of this had saved her, so he jammed it all into the trash. Liars. False prophets. Snake oil. His mood plummeted back to the tar pits.

No. No. Lauren had written him a letter, had given him a task, and there were more to come, a dozen of them, and that was so amazing, so great, such a gift, he wasn’t going to ruin it by thinking about how dead she was.

With this letter, she was still here.

Ten minutes later, he had Pebbles on a leash. It wasn’t Saturday . . . it was Tuesday, so no farmers’ market, but that was okay, because he could drive to the Stop & Shop, which had been Lauren’s favorite grocery store. She hated Whole Foods and was mystified by Aldi. He’d take Pebbles for a walk first, because she did deserve some exercise, and then they’d get in the car so she could go for a ride, her favorite thing on earth.