We kept caring. Tea. Toast. Medications on time. Walks to the back garden. But the caregiving now sat inside a second story—one neither of us had planned and both of us chose. He said things that were not dramatic and somehow changed the air. “You season my days.” “This table remembers what warmth feels like.” “You gave me back my mornings.”
Of course, the neighborhood noticed. Mariah’s questions gently probed. A friend’s jokes arrived with an edge. My husband watched me leave with a new stillness in his eyes. “You okay?” he asked one evening as I came home flushed with weather and something else.
I told Mr. Bennett what was shifting. He squeezed my hand. “People see light,” he said. “They guess its source. We can’t control that. We can control care and courage.”
In the garden, late sun set a gold ribbon across the grass. “If I had to,” he said, “I would keep this in the quiet rather than go empty. But I won’t take anything from you that tears you apart.”
The words were a vow shaped like restraint.
The Stairs, the Scrape, and Choosing Tenderness
Continue reading…
