“And then you were born, Freddy. I felt it all over again. I felt twice as much as I had known I could feel.” She looked away, and called out for my father, and he, almost reluctantly, came to sit on the side of the bed. He took her left hand. I curled up farther down the bed, so that several times she had to ask me to move slightly so she could stretch out her legs. Freddy and I held her right hand together. “First there was you, Leonard. All my childhood I was this little girl who thought she was unlovable, and then you came along and you really loved me. When I met you, you made me feel like a person. I wasn’t a person until I met you. I didn’t know it, but I wasn’t, I really wasn’t. And now I’ve had thirty wonderful years. You just accepted me exactly as I was, and loved me as exactly who I was. You supported me through fights, and miscarriages, and worries, and panic. You always told me I was right, even when you didn’t think so.” A shiver ran down her spine. “I would gladly have given decades of my life to be the one who went first. I can’t imagine what I would have done if you had died before me. You are my life. For thirty years you have been my life.”

Her voice trailed off for a minute. The drug was beginning to set in, and her speech was slowing. “I always felt important when we went out together. You always made me feel important. It wasn’t the jewelry and clothes. When I went out with you, I was carried along by your love. And then you were born, Harry. And then you, Freddy. Two more came along, and then there were three people who all really loved me. And I loved you all so much; I was so overwhelmed, so overpowered by it.”

She turned her head and looked at my father. “Leonard,” she said. “Leonard, don’t forget that your life is in other people. I know you, Leonard. I’ll be gone and you’ll try to bury yourself in the office and work and you’ll crowd up your mind. I’ve told the boys and I’ve told all our friends: you have to find someone for yourself. You could live for another thirty years, Leonard, for as long as we’ve known each other. Don’t waste that time.”