The last thing Walter said to me, three weeks before he died, was, “You’ve done enough.” I thought that was about the caregiving, the bedpans, the sleepless nights. I thought he was releasing me…

I recognized it immediately: my sister-in-law Renee’s van, the one with the cracked left tail light she’d been meaning to fix for three years. That van, sitting in our driveway on a Saturday morning when we were supposed to be suffering, set off something in me that I can’t fully explain. The soil on Walter’s grave was still fresh, still dark, still smelling of everything final, and there she was, already circling.