We had been married for ten years, a decade that, in hindsight, felt less like a partnership and more like a slow, quiet erasure of myself. I gave everything I had to that marriage. I adjusted my ambitions to accommodate Curtis’s moods, softened my opinions to avoid his irritation, and learned to exist in the background of his life. When his father Arthur fell ill, there was never even a discussion about who would take care of him. Curtis simply assumed I would. I became not only a wife but a nurse, an organizer, a mediator between doctors, pharmacists, and insurance companies.

I woke before dawn to administer medication, learned how to lift a grown man without hurting him, and memorized the subtle changes in Arthur’s breathing that meant pain or panic was approaching. I cooked special meals, cleaned endlessly, and held conversations that mattered because Arthur knew time was running out. Through it all, Curtis drifted in and out, always busy, always distracted, always claiming the weight of seeing his father decline was “too much” for him. I believed him. I told myself grief manifests differently in different people. I thought love meant endurance.