She kissed his cheek and said something I could not hear.

He stood in the driveway for a long time after she was gone.

Later he told me she had said, “Be the man who makes room.”

It was such an ordinary sentence.

He repeated it as though it were an instruction he could carry for the rest of his life.

PART 17: A Choice That Was Mine

By late spring, Marian had finished the most intensive phase of her planned treatment, though follow-up appointments and decisions about further care remained.

On some days she was energetic enough to sit outside and direct my terrible gardening.