And at night — this is the part no one sees — I would wake in the dark and cross the cold hallway and stand in her doorway, just to watch her frail chest rise and fall, just to be sure it still was, before I could let myself go back to bed.

Twelve years, that went on.

Twelve years of oatmeal and medicine and midnight doorways.

Twelve years of watching a woman who had once hauled feed sacks and driven tractors grow so light and so small that I could shift her in the bed with one arm.

People say twelve years like it is a number.

It is not a number.

It is four thousand mornings.