And when the officers finally led Michael out through those courthouse doors, I did not watch, because I had already turned away, and I had finally understood that winning had never meant watching my son lose everything.

Winning was walking out into the sunlight, reaching into my own coat pocket for my own house key, and knowing that no one, ever again, would make a decision about my life without my permission.

I was seventy-one years old.

I had lost my husband, and in every way that mattered I had lost my son.

I leaned on a cane some mornings and I would not see eighty as many times as I had once imagined.

But I walked out of that courthouse into the ordinary sunlight the freest I had felt in years, holding my own key to my own door, the author of my own remaining days, and if that is not a kind of victory then I do not know what the word could possibly mean.