What did not heal on any medical timeline was the thing my mother had installed underneath — a small, permanent flinch, a reflex of seeking permission, a bone-deep belief that her own basic needs were impositions she had to apologize for.

My mother had spent a year teaching my wife that she was a burden whose right to rest and eat and sit down was conditional on someone else’s approval, and a year of that does not wash off in a week of safety.

I would find Aurora standing in our own kitchen, hungry, waiting — waiting for a permission that no longer needed to come from anyone, because there was no longer anyone to withhold it, and still her body waited, because her body had been trained.

It broke my heart every time, and it also, slowly, taught me the shape of the work ahead.

I could not undo the year.

I could not reach back into it and be the husband who caught it in month one.