Cindy Milstein (they) on Nostr: Part I 12 years ago on this night of May 16, I sat side by side with my cancer-ridden ...

Part I

12 years ago on this night of May 16, I sat side by side with my cancer-ridden mom as we watched the sky share a magnificent Midwest sunset …

A mere few hours earlier, her husband of over 5 decades—a love at first sight between them both that never faded—breathed his last; the breath of life instantly shifted to the silence of death. Or maybe it was just the 2 of us who were quiet on this night 12 years ago.

All I recall hearing, after his breathing ended, was my mom saying, “This is all we have: us,” as she gestured at my dad and then me, as both of us kept a hand on my dad’s lifeless body. And I knew she meant that nothing but what we do to love and care for each other matters.

There wasn’t need for more words. Just a slowness that somehow got us from his deathbed to my mom’s two armchairs to watch a second “death,” the day’s end in a fiery pink sunset that faded out until we sat in the dark.