I was born Naomi Marie Blackwood, became Naomi Canton when I married Nicholas in 1981, and remained that person until three weeks ago, the day after we buried him. I’m 68 years old, with arthritic hands that still remember how to bake the sourdough bread my son Brandon used to beg for on Sunday mornings, and the way my daughter Melissa’s hair felt when I braided it before elementary school. I’m telling you this so you understand that before everything collapsed, I was simply a mother who believed she had raised good children.

Nicholas’s cancer took fourteen months to kill him. Pancreatic—the silent executioner that gives you just enough time to put your affairs in order, but not enough time to actually live with the knowledge. We kept it quiet at first, just between us. Our children were busy with their own lives. Brandon with his financial consulting career in Boston that seemed to require him to miss every major holiday. Melissa with her perpetually failing wellness businesses in Denver that somehow always needed “one more” investment from Dad.

“They don’t need this burden yet,” Nicholas had said, staring at the ceiling of our bedroom, the morphine making his words slur slightly. “Let them live their lives a little longer without this shadow.” I nodded because I loved him. But I knew better. I knew our children.