It is one thing to accept that your life is ending.

It is another to feel that ending being stolen from you, a few weeks at a time, by a hand that also passes you the salt at dinner.

That, I came to understand, was the particular loneliness in his face, worse than the loneliness of dying, which is at least a loneliness we all must one day share.

His was the loneliness of a man who could not trust the people closest to him, in a house full of his own blood, and who had begun to believe he would leave the world without ever again knowing what it felt like to be safe among others.

It was that loneliness, more than his failing heart, that I would spend our brief marriage helping to heal.