Yes: the moment I stopped paying, they would be gone.

But a bond that exists only as long as the payments continue was never a bond.

It was a subscription.

And you do not owe a subscription your life.

The grief I felt was real — I would not pretend otherwise, and I did not try to rush past it — but underneath the grief was something I had not expected, which was relief, vast and disorienting, the relief of a person who has been carrying a piano up a staircase for a decade and has finally, simply, set it down.

My father was still on the stairs with me.