My father worked in an office for most of his life and my mother did too, so while we were not poor, every dollar we had was given a specific job.
My brother moved across the country for work years ago, which meant I was the one who checked the furnace filter and noticed when my father began looking older.
Then one winter afternoon, my father died quite suddenly in a crash on an icy road while he was driving home from the store.
The doctor’s mouth kept moving while my mind stalled out somewhere between hearing about the accident and the finality of his passing.
My father was only sixty eight years old and he was supposed to have so much more time with us.
My mother folded in on herself after that happened, and she would sit at the kitchen table with a cold mug of tea while staring at his empty chair.
She stopped finishing her meals and eventually stopped starting them at all because she said food felt heavy in her throat.
Three weeks later, her jeans hung loose on her hips and she looked like someone the wind could easily move.
I took her to the hospital where the oncologist delivered the brutal news that she had advanced cancer that was already inoperable.
I sat in the parking garage for twenty minutes with both hands on the steering wheel because I could not believe life was coming for my second parent so soon.
My brother wanted to come back to help, but he had a mortgage and teenagers in school, so we worked through our options like heartbroken children doing math.
In the end, there was no real choice because I was the person who could stay and care for her.
That night, I told Russell that I wanted to move into my mother’s house for a while to be her primary caregiver.
Russell looked at me as if I had announced I was adopting a tiger and asked why he should be dragged into another year of my family’s problems.
“She is very sick, Russell, and she simply cannot be left alone right now,” I explained while trying to keep my voice steady.
Russell laughed and asked who exactly was going to cook and do the laundry for him if I was not there to handle those tasks.
That was my husband in one sentence, as he was not worried about me or sad for my mother, but only concerned that his socks might become his own responsibility.
I softened my own pain so the room would stay calm and promised him that I would handle what I could for our household.