No other arrangement was ever looked for.

What I did not see, sitting at that table, was that a decision was being made about the rest of my life, and that everyone in the room understood it except me.

They were not cruel about it.

That is what I have never quite been able to get past.

There was no argument, no ugliness, no one refusing outright to help.

It was gentler and more final than that — a soft collective sliding-away, four people each privately deciding that this was not going to be their burden and trusting, correctly, that if they all simply declined to reach for it, it would come to rest on whoever was left holding still.