And I had removed all three of them, completely, from the family trust that Jonathan and I had created years earlier, back when we were a young couple thinking about how to protect two small children who were still alive.

No person who had chosen a birthday steak dinner over three wooden caskets would ever inherit a single penny of mine, or make a single medical decision on my behalf, or have any claim on any part of my life.

I did not do it in a rage.

I did it slowly, over months, at a lawyer’s conference table, with a clear head, the way you do a thing you have thought about carefully and are entirely certain of.

And I had directed the entire eighteen-point-seven-million-dollar settlement — every cent of it — into a newly registered non-profit organization.