My mother was gone, I was alone in the world, I was scraping by in a life that had narrowed down to rent and grief, and yet in those six weeks, walking beside that wheelchair, being someone’s daughter even in pretend, I felt something I had not felt since Claire died and perhaps had never fully felt at all.

I felt chosen.

I felt that there was a person in the world whose whole face lit up at the sight of me, who was glad, simply and completely glad, that I existed.

I told myself it was a gift I was giving him.

I did not understand that it was, at least as much, a gift he was giving me, and that he had crossed an ocean of suffering to be able to give it.

Looking back at those six weeks now, with everything I know, I see them completely differently, and yet I would not change how I experienced them at the time for anything.