“If I’m not going to be here to give you all the love I intended to give you, the joy, the fun, then you’re going to have to do it yourself … you’ll have to do it for me.” Luke drew in air.

“Tell her. And tell yourself, Mom.”

Charlene laid her head on his bed and I knew by the movement of her shoulders that she was crying and that she didn’t want him to know, determined to maintain a semblance of strength and optimism. By force of will and mother-love, everything would be all right. He’d come out of surgery and return to work, to riding motorcycles and snowmobiles. This would be one of those nightmares that you endure with pounding chest, but once the dream is over, you return to ordinary life, the nightmare forgotten.

Tears ran down my cheeks. Sky had lost her baby just a few months prior and I thought of that birth, that horrible nonlife birth, and now this. Luke seemed peaceful. It was the morphine, I told myself. Luke lost consciousness or fell asleep. “I guess he’s resting to gather his strength.”

Charlene didn’t respond. She kept her head on his bed, kissing his hand.

The nurses entered and said, “It’s time to go.”

Luke woke and put his hand on his mom’s hair. She lifted her head and they looked at each other. The charge between them was palpable. “Love doesn’t die. You know I’ll always be with you. Right, Mom?”

“Yes, Luke.” The end of the word caught in her throat and she sat there, hands empty, as they wheeled him out. “And I’ll always be with you. You can’t die.”

He didn’t die on the operating table.

He came through the surgery but did not regain consciousness. We waited. By then, Jenny sat with us as we shuffled between his room, the waiting room, and the cafeteria. That day, she had been called into work because a coworker was ill and, in her haste to get the kids to day care and herself to work, had left her phone at home. When her mom first called her at work, she had been at lunch. Jenny arrived at the hospital right before they wheeled him to surgery. She walked with the gurney, repeating over and over, “I love you.”

After the surgery, Charlene sang him “Puff the Magic Dragon” and “Blackbird,” the lullabies he loved.

Jenny read jokes she picked up from the Internet. Adam played his iPod for him. Diane read the novel he hadn’t finished. We recalled the time when he and Sky got up early and decided to make us French toast. They weren’t allowed to turn on the stove, so it was uncooked, soggy bread floating in cups of syrup.

Jenny laughed, but Luke didn’t move.