Three weeks after my wife d:ied, I took our newborn twins to the mall to buy the yellow sleepers she wanted. When both babies needed changing, I made the only choice I had. Then one woman turned my hardest day into a public lesson she never expected.
That morning, I sat in my car outside the mall with Ivy and Lily asleep in their stroller, while Claire’s voice played from my phone. It was an old voice note she had recorded before the delivery.
“Mason, please remember to buy more zip-up sleepers.”
In the recording, I laughed. “What’s wrong with the button ones?”
“No buttons at three in the morning,” Claire said. “Trust me. You’ll cry before the babies do.”
I pressed my thumb against my wedding ring.
“Fine,” my recorded voice said. “Zip-ups.”
“And yellow,” she added. “Everyone buys pink, and they’re babies, not cupcakes.”
