“I wish I could,” he confessed, staring down at his hands.
“Then tell me right now,” I urged him.
He looked down at the documents tucked inside his coat. “You already have enough to carry.”
“That is not your decision to make,” I insisted immediately.
“It should be sometimes,” he replied, looking into my eyes. “If someone needed help tomorrow, you would forget to ask whether you could afford to give it.”
“That sounds like a compliment,” I said softly.
“It scares me,” he confessed sincerely.
“Why does it scare you?” I asked him quietly.
“Because you never know when to let someone else be the problem,” he explained quietly.
I thought he deserved one corner of his life where cancer and I were not watching him constantly. That decision became the first thing I regretted after he died.
Five weeks later, his condition got much worse very quickly.
I held his hand tightly in the quiet hospital room.
