He died in the spring of the second year. Our daughter told me at the time. I did not go to the service.

I was numb at that counter for entirely the wrong reason. Not the money. Six winters in a room that shook, hungry nights, bottles collected in the rain, all of it, while a man who thought he was sparing me was in fact leaving me to survive a decision I was never given the chance to make.

I am angry still. I am also, underneath it, something I have not found a word for.

I paid for the treatment. The doctor was right and I was lucky. I bought a small house near my daughter in Waukesha with a kitchen that gets the morning, and I put the rest into accounts for my grandchildren, which I think is what he intended and which I would have decided anyway.

I keep the letter in the box the card lived in.

He spent four decades deciding what I could carry, and then made one last decision for me in a courthouse hallway without ever looking back. Protecting somebody from the truth is not the same as loving them, and the last six years of my life were the price of that difference. I will never again let anyone choose my hardships for me.