After bu.rying my husband, I told no one about the ticket I had bought for a year-long cruise. A week later, my son told me, “Now that Dad is d.ead, you’ll take care of our new pets every time we travel.”

When Robert died of a heart attack, everyone in Valencia assumed that the widow, Margaret Walker, would stay still—sad and available for whatever was needed. I helped organize the funeral myself, accepted hugs, endured empty condolences, and let my children, Michael and Emily, speak in front of me as if they had already assigned me a new role: the useful mother, the on-call grandmother, the woman who waits for phone calls and solves domestic problems.

I didn’t tell them that three months before my husband’s death I had secretly bought a ticket for a year-long cruise through the Mediterranean, Asia, and Latin America. I hadn’t done it out of madness or whim. I had done it because for years I had felt that my life had been reduced to taking care of everyone except myself.