I was wrong to worry.

Because what my son actually learned, in that house, was the thing I most wanted him to know and could never have taught him with words: that you do not abandon the people who need you when they can no longer do anything for you.

He learned it by watching.

He carried Fiona her water.

He sat on the edge of her bed and told her about his day while she listened with her eyes half-closed, and she was, I think, the most patient audience that talkative little boy ever had.

When she died he cried as hard as I did, because to him she had not been a burden or an inconvenience or an inheritance — she had simply been his grandmother, present every day of his remembered life, and loved.