By every clinical measure he should not have been alive to whisper my name when I came through his bedroom door.

But he was.

He had held on, through all of it, in a cold and emptied house, and I do not believe it was an accident.

I believe he was waiting — not for the fortune to be settled, not for justice, not even for the peaches.

I believe he was simply waiting for one person who loved him to come home, so that he would not have to do the last and loneliest thing a human being does entirely alone.

He held the door of his own life open by main force until I could get there.