Because I understood what it was.

Even while dying, even in the last weeks when he had every right to think only of himself, Mark had been trying to protect both of us — his mother and his wife, the two women who would be left to grieve him, from a conflict he could see coming as clearly as he could see his own end.

He was giving his mother permission to grieve however she needed to, including badly, including angrily, including by being furious at him, the one person whose feelings could no longer be hurt by her fury.

He was making himself the safe target, on purpose, from beyond his own death — be angry at me, not at her — so that Violet would have somewhere to put the unbearable thing, and so that I would not have to be that place.

And at the same time, in the same letter, he was giving me the opposite gift: permission to move forward without guilt.

Permission to honor his wishes and not feel that I had betrayed his grieving mother by doing so.