My parents were hard workers who made sure every dollar had a purpose. My brother moved away for work, so I was the one who stayed close. I was the one who brought groceries, checked the furnace, and noticed when my father began to look older in a way that had nothing to do with his gray hair.
Then, one winter afternoon, he died.
It happened in an instant. An icy road, a crash, and a doctor’s mouth moving while my mind stalled somewhere between “he had an accident” and “we did everything we could.” My father was only 68. He was supposed to have more time.
My mother folded in on herself after that. She didn’t do it loudly; she just began to disappear by inches. She would sit at the kitchen table with a cold cup of tea, staring at his empty chair. She stopped eating. She said food felt “heavy.” My brother and I thought it was just grief.
Three weeks later, she looked like someone the wind could blow away. I took her to the hospital.
The oncologist was kind in that brutal way doctors have to be. Advanced cancer. Inoperable. Treatment might buy a year if everything went perfectly. I sat in the parking garage afterward, hands frozen on the steering wheel, unable to start the car. I remember thinking, absurdly, that I hadn’t even finished grieving my father before life came for my mother.
My brother wanted to help, but he lived across the country with a mortgage, kids in school, and a wife caring for her own father. We did the “heartbroken children math” and realized there was no choice: I was the one who could stay.
That night, I told Scott I wanted to move into my mother’s house for a while. He looked at me as if I had suggested adopting a tiger.
“We just got through your dad’s funeral,” he said, his voice sounding rehearsed. “Now you want me dragged into another year of your family’s problems?”
I blinked, stunned by his resistance. “She’s sick, Scott. She can’t be alone.”
