On a hot September evening on the sixth floor of Albany Medical Center, I was lying flat so as not to bleed after an angiogram and Ann, just days from being bedridden from her hysterectomy, was weak, slouching in a lounge chair at the foot of my bed. I felt some pain, and she tried to raise herself but couldn’t. Her stitches were pulling. I heard her moan, and as I reached for her, I started bleeding. The nurses came, and we both fell back, and Robert was there, arms outstretched between us, a warm washcloth on each of our brows, more centered than ever, calming us and soothing our minds.

When Ann dozed, he held my face and told me I was meant to go through this, that it would, in the end, be good for me, for all of us. I didn’t want to accept what he was saying, but as I resisted, I knew underneath that we were falling through the crack of our illusions into the reality and wonder of a single breath. Neither of us knew how to meet the days without being broken, or how to strip willingly of all that doesn’t work. And when we don’t put down what doesn’t work, life zeros in on falseness the way fire and ice find weak surfaces to break. As Robert wrote later, “What ransom or allegiance dare save us from our lives?”

About two years into his sobriety, my cancer had festered in a rib in my back, and after surgery to remove that rib, I was faced with months of chemo. Robert and Ann were always there in golden silhouette behind whatever nurse or doctor was putting in or drawing out. Like medieval illuminations, they stood vigil over my pain, and it became too familiar to be always prone, looking up into their worried, loving faces ringed by clouds or sun or the changing array of ceiling panels from the many rooms of treatment.

In my last treatment, when I was hairless and pale, my veins had gone stiff, resisting the needles. The very cords of my body were saying, “No more.” The dearest nurse had tried four times, and none of my darkened limbs would receive the injection well. I was sweating way inside, could feel a distant uncontrollable terror starting up like a scream on horseback galloping for me, its voice honing in before it could be seen. Robert took my hand and began to rub my forearm as they tried again. This time it took, though it felt raw and prickly like a stinger left in its wound. They began to drip the chemicals, and I felt that this was purgatory, neither dead nor alive but perversely forced by a cornered choice to take in drops of poison to cleanse a sickness that was growing, though it couldn’t be seen.