I wasn’t wearing the dress when I died. In fact, I only wore it once, many years ago, at the beginning of my adulthood – that long march of routines until my unremarkable death at the end of an unremarkable decline, dying alone in the same room in my family home where I had been born. The day I died, the dress had been hanging in a garment bag in a closet – not even my closet but one in a spare room we used for out-of-season clothes that were too nice to give away – for nearly sixty years, and yet somehow it snared around my soul like a fisherman’s net. I have been trapped at its side ever since.…
Originally published in Forevermore on December 28, 2024.