It gave me back the ability to be a good son instead of a drowning one, and that, in the end, was the greater gift.

Then I hired a dedicated home health nurse, a kind and competent woman who could give my mother the steady daily care I had never been able to afford and had been trying, badly, to provide myself between eighteen-hour shifts.

And then, with what remained, I bought us a house, a modest stone-and-brick place in a quiet suburb outside Chicago, with a real garden and good light and clean air, a place where my mother could rest in comfort and peace for whatever years were left to her.

And she got better.