You're So Strong

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"You're doing so well," they tell you. "You're so strong." Meanwhile, you're standing in the middle of your living room, staring at a mountain of grown-man Legos, wondering if it's disrespectful to donate them or insane to keep them. You're on hold with AT&T for the third time this week, trying to explain to a stranger that the account holder doesn't need unlimited data anymore because he's dead. You are holding it together on the outside, but on the inside, you are navigating a map that no one gave you, for a terrain you never wanted to visit. Leslie Harter-Berg knows too well the absurdity of the "admin of death"—the paperwork, the passwords, the phone calls that punctuate the grief. She knows what it's like to have a life that was "pretty darn good" implode into a reality of solo parenting and widowhood at the age of thirty. She knows exactly what it feels like to have to do school drop-off when simply getting out