One of the last things he said to me was “I’m sorry.” I could not understand, for many years, why he could possibly be apologizing to me. I should have been apologizing to him. He was the one who was in so much pain. He was the one who was dying. But he understood what I was too shocked to grasp. This would be the defining event of my life. Every other loss, every other heartbreak, would reopen this wound. And even the very best moments of my life—any future successes, my wedding, holding my newborn baby for the first time—would be tarnished by his absence.
