“Why?” I whispered.
Daniel swallowed hard. “That’s what we fought about, Mom.”
My head snapped up. “Tell me everything.”
He sat fully on the carpeted floor across from me, looking completely ridiculous in my old dress, yet breaking my heart completely.
“Four months ago, Dad called me over to the house. It was a bad week, remember? He could barely walk.”
I remembered the terror of that week perfectly.
“He asked me to lug a dusty box down from the attic. I assumed it was life insurance papers or a will. But then he reached in and pulled this dress out.” Daniel looked at the earring in his palm. “And then, he asked me a question.”
“What question?”
His eyes lifted and locked onto mine. “He asked me when the last time was that you did something just because you wanted to.”
My voice completely failed me. The words wouldn’t form.
Daniel continued softly, “I told him I didn’t know.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I deflected instinctively. “I do things I want to do.”
“Do you?”
I bristled, my defensive walls rising. “Of course I do. I…”
The answer should have been right there on the tip of my tongue. It should have been easy. But my mind was suddenly violently blank.
Daniel looked away first, offering a quiet mercy. “Dad couldn’t answer it either.”
I tugged nervously at my dark collar.
“He started talking about our family vacations,” Daniel recalled, his voice tight. “He realized that every single trip we’d ever taken was somewhere he wanted to go, somewhere I wanted to go, or somewhere that conveniently worked around my school schedule.”
“Families compromise, Daniel. That’s how love works,” I argued.
“I know that. But then Dad said something else. He said your entire life had been reduced to nothing but lists.”
I stared at him, confused. “What does that even mean?”
“Grocery lists. Medication schedules. Checklists of things I needed for my dorm in college. Things Dad needed for his chemo treatments. Reminders for other people’s birthdays. Endless doctors appointments.” Daniel rubbed a hand exhausted over his face. “He said he genuinely couldn’t remember the last time he’d asked you what you wanted for dinner without already giving you a multiple-choice list to pick from.”
My chair scraped loudly backward against the floor as I stood up abruptly. “Your father was dying, Daniel! He didn’t need to spend his final, precious months inventing reasons to feel guilty about our marriage!”
Daniel scrambled to his feet to match me. “Mom, he wasn’t asking me to make him feel better!”
“Then what did he want?”
Daniel went dead silent.
There it was again. That heavy, suffocating silence that had swallowed four entire months of my son’s life.
“Danny. Tell me.”
“He wanted me to give you the dress after he died,” he confessed.
“That’s all?”
“No.” His eyes suddenly filled with fresh tears. “He wanted me to turn down my new job offer. He wanted me to move back into the house after he was gone. He wanted me to promise to make sure you didn’t spend the rest of your life caring for everyone in the world except yourself.”
