Then one winter afternoon my father died in a car accident.
He was sixty-eight. It happened so quickly I barely understood the doctor’s words.
After that, my mother changed. She didn’t cry dramatically; she just slowly disappeared into grief. She stopped eating. Stopped talking much. Three weeks later she looked so thin it frightened me.
I took her to the hospital.
The oncologist told us the truth in a calm voice: advanced cancer. Inoperable. Maybe a year.
I sat in the parking garage afterward staring at the steering wheel, trying to understand how I was losing both parents almost at once.
My brother wanted to come home, but he lived across the country with a family and responsibilities. We talked for hours. In the end, the reality was obvious.
I was the one who had to stay.
That night I told Mark I planned to move into my mother’s house for a while.
He stared at me.
“We just finished your dad’s funeral,” he said. “Now you want me dragged into another year of your family’s problems?”
I blinked, surprised.
“She’s sick, Mark.”
“I know.”
“She can’t be alone.”
“So take her to appointments.”
“It’s more than that.”
“Does it have to become our whole life?”