I never married.

I never had children of what people would call my own.

And I know how that sounds from the outside — the uncle who sacrificed everything, who gave up his youth, who threw his whole life into someone else’s abandoned children.

People say it to me sometimes, in that soft admiring voice, you gave up so much, and I never know how to explain that they have it exactly backwards.

Because I did not give anything up.

That is the part nobody believes and the part that is most true.