I sank onto the couch and stared at the family portrait of the five of us hanging on the wall.
The faint metallic scent of blood still clung to the air, refusing to fade.
It felt like someone had carved a piece straight from my heart and the wound wouldn’t stop bleeding.
For years, Mom and Dad had been inseparable, just as in love as the day they met.
Dad lived simply, never one to splurge, but I still remembered how he once bought her an expensive dress just because she paused in front of a shop window and smiled at it.
When Mom was diagnosed with late-stage kidney failure, Dad didn’t hesitate for a second; he emptied the savings he had spent half a lifetime building just to cover her treatment.
Afraid she wouldn’t get enough nutrition after the surgery, he took on three jobs a day just to buy her the best supplements money could buy.
Watching him push himself like that, Mom would tear up with heartache.
She often told people at the hospital that she was the luckiest woman alive to have married a man like him.
And every time she said that Grandma would smile warmly and reply, “My son’s the lucky one; he married you.”