At my in-laws’ 50th anniversary, my mother-in-law announced that my husband would inherit nothing from their $5 million estate because “Mark doesn’t need it.” Ten minutes later hajaji

I realized I had also organized parts of my own life around those same assumptions without ever naming them.

And Mark finally got to be their son again.

Not their driver.

Not their handyman.

Not their medical coordinator, password archivist, printer emergency department, or unpaid property manager.

Just their son.

Sometimes the person in a family who “doesn’t need anything” is simply the person everyone became accustomed to needing.

If you have someone like that in yours—the one everybody calls because you know they will answer—try calling them sometime when nothing is broken.