She Stood at Our Bedside

	I could see her now, standing beside my bed. Her head was downcast and she was crying. It had been so long, but her face was still fresh in my mind, pure as the day she died. It was four years ago last month.

	She had been walking home from school when she was mugged. He had stabbed her in the stomach. The doctors did what they could, but the wound had become septic. Two weeks later, my husband and I were burying our daughter. We never really recovered from it. I picked up a small drinking habit and my husband smoked a lot now, but we liked to think we adjusted.

	Three years later, my husband collapsed while headed out for work. I called an ambulance and he was rushed to the hospital for tests. It was lung cancer. The doctors gave him six months, but his treatment had kept it at bay for almost a year. In a way we beat them, but it wasn't by enough. A couple months ago his condition regressed and doctors told him him to spend the rest of his days at home in comfort.

	There's a legend. Some murdered young women don't move on to the afterlife, but instead become banshees. Spirits who's cries are said to be omens of death. As our little girl stood at my bedside, she looked down at my husband and wept. I pulled his sleeping form closer to me, now little more than a skeleton, and wept with her.