Do you understand the difference?

I did not marry a pair of hands.

I did not marry a surgical license.

I married you.

The whole of you.

And that does not stop being true because your hands have stopped obeying you.

If anything it becomes more true.” His face crumpled, and I pressed his hand harder against my cheek and I said the words I had written that morning on a scrap of paper and tucked under a fork, the words I had meant lightly then and meant with my whole soul now.

“You don’t have to take care of everyone anymore, Marcus,” I said.