I was folding laundry when my phone rang.

“I need you,” Rachel said.

“I need you to come now.”

When I arrived at the hospital, she sat in a plastic chair with the baby carrier resting between her knees. She looked up at me with tears in her eyes.

“He’s gone. Just like that.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I simply held her as she cried.

The funeral was held on a Saturday. Rain poured down over the cemetery as Rachel stood there with her children gathered around her.

“I don’t know how to do this alone,” she whispered to me afterward.

“You won’t be alone. I’m right here.”

Not long after that, she received a cancer diagnosis.

“I don’t have time for this,” she said when she told me. “I just got through one nightmare.”

She tried to stay strong for the children. She joked about wigs and insisted on taking the kids to school even when she could barely stand. I began coming over every morning.