Three nights before my son died, he made me promise to protect a secret from his ten-year-old daughter. Nine years later, she dug it up from beneath my oak tree and carried it into my kitchen. “Grandma,” she said, setting the muddy box between us, “you need to explain everything.”
The last normal day we ever spent together as a family, my son, Caleb, was on a ladder fixing the porch light.
Maddie stood at the bottom of the steps, clutching her recital papers. “Dad, you promised you’d help me practice. Ms.
Jensen says the back row needs to feel my voice.”
Caleb grinned down at her. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world, Bug.”
He climbed down, tapped her nose, and chased her into the house while she squealed.
Three weeks later, we were sitting in a hospital room, and the world stopped being perfect.
The doctor spoke carefully. “…
aggressive brain tumor.” Then he hit us with the word that ended everything. “Inoperable.”
“How long do I have?” Caleb asked.
The doctor hesitated. “Months.”
I reached over and grabbed Caleb’s hand.
It seemed impossible that something inside him was taking him away, piece by piece, while I was still holding on.
In the parking lot afterward, Caleb leaned against my car and closed his eyes.
“I promised I’d be there for Maddie’s recital next month.”
“You will be,” I said quickly, and hoped it was true.
He didn’t tell Maddie right away. For a week, life continued in a state of careful denial. He helped her practice her lines in the living room every night and broke apart once he’d tucked her into bed.
“She can never see me like this,” Caleb said one night as he wiped away tears.
“I don’t want her to know how terrified I am.”
I held his hand because that was all I could do. He was a grown man, but in that moment, he was my little boy again, and I couldn’t fix his scraped knee.
I couldn’t fix any of it.
The decline was faster than we expected.
The headaches worsened first, then the nausea. Then came the days when he couldn’t get out of bed without help.
We told Maddie together.
We had to — Caleb’s time was running out.
A month later, the medication made his speech slow and slurred. The night before the morphine dosage was scheduled to increase again, Caleb motioned for me to lean close.
“Mom. There’s something…
Maddie can’t know. Not yet. In my desk…” Caleb breathed.
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