The family nurse. The head chef. The unpaid therapist.

The emergency chauffeur. And, most destructively, the bank of last resort.

When Ernest’s heart first began to fail and the insurance company denied coverage for his experimental medication, I didn’t weep.

I walked to the pawnshop downtown and sold my diamond wedding earrings — his first-anniversary gift to me.

When our son, Austin, lost his corporate job to “restructuring” (which I later learned was insubordination), I didn’t lecture him.

I drained my personal savings — eighteen thousand, four hundred dollars — to keep his luxury SUV from repossession and his mortgage current.

When his wife, Chloe, gave birth to Maya, I spent four months on their spring-shot couch, waking at all hours to warm bottles and change diapers so Chloe could “preserve her mental health.”

I had let myself become an inexhaustible resource. A well expected to give water even when it was dry.

And my reward? On the day of Ernest’s funeral, as the last mourners drifted from the gravesite and left me alone over the fresh dirt, Austin didn’t step forward to take my trembling hand.