My own daughter left me a breezy little voicemail saying, “Mom, you don’t need to come this summer. Paul thinks it’s better if we keep the lake house for our family,” as if the cedar walls, the sage green door, the dock, the porch swing, and every nail in that place hadn’t been paid for with my money

I was raised in a small town outside Montgomery by a mother who thought idle hands invited trouble and a father who loved us through repaired hinges and sharpened pencils. By the time I was nineteen, I knew how to make biscuits, check a fever without a thermometer, and calm down a frightened person by the sound of my voice alone.

That last skill made me a very good nurse and, much later, a very convenient mother. I retired at sixty two because Arthur got diagnosed and I wanted every minute that remained to belong to us.

Pancreatic cancer does not bargain. It arrives like a locked door slamming somewhere deep in the house of your life, and then it starts closing the rest of them one by one.

Arthur lasted fourteen months. People say things like, “At least you had time to prepare,” but I have always wanted to ask them what exactly they think preparing looks like for losing your soul.

There is no preparation. There is only logistics, morphine, and waking at two in the morning because the person next to you is breathing differently.