I smiled weakly and told him that Connor loved him in his own way, but even as I spoke those words, I felt how empty they sounded.
The nights grew harder as his illness progressed, and I stayed beside him through vomiting, fever, and hallucinations, holding his hand when fear overtook him and reading the newspaper aloud when he needed distraction from pain.
Sometimes he called me by his late wife’s name, and sometimes he spoke to people who had been gone for decades, yet every time he returned to clarity, he would look at me with quiet gratitude that broke my heart.
One stormy night when the power flickered out briefly, he gripped my wrist with surprising strength and whispered, “You are still here,” and I answered softly, “Yes, I am here,” even though my own strength was beginning to wear thin.
When the lights came back on, tears slipped from his eyes, and he added in a faint voice, “That is more than I can say for my son.”
Three days before he slipped into a coma, he asked me to open the curtains so he could see the trees outside, and his voice, though weak, carried a sharp clarity that unsettled me deeply. “