I spared no expense, because expense was the one language I was fluent in, and I told myself, every time I signed another authorization, that this was what it meant to be a good son.

I believed that.

I want to be honest about how completely I believed it.

I thought that by surrounding my mother with the most expensive care that existed, I was giving her everything a dying woman could want.

I thought the measure of my love was the size of the invoices.

It is a seductive belief, for a man who has money, because it lets him love from a comfortable distance and call the distance generosity.

I could write a check for a specialist in Zurich without rearranging a single hour of my own day, and I told myself the check was the love, when in truth the check was the thing I did instead of love, the thing that let me feel I had met the obligation without ever having to be in the room.