David was asleep less than a foot away from me.
I sat on the edge of the bed. Then I opened the envelope.
Inside were two handwritten pages.
The first sentence read:
Linda, if you are reading this, you have already been stronger than I ever had any right to ask you to be.
My knees gave out.
I ended up sitting on the floor beside the bed, holding the letter in my hands.
I read it once.
Then I read it again.
David had written it in the winter of 2019.
Three years before he became ill.
At that time, his brother Gerald had been seriously sick.
David had watched Gerald’s wife, Patricia, become completely consumed by caregiving.
She stopped sleeping.
Stopped eating.
Stopped seeing friends.
Her husband’s illness became her entire identity.
David wrote that everyone focused on the person who was sick while nobody noticed the caregiver slowly disappearing.
He had watched Patricia disappear.
And one night, he came home and wrote me that letter.
He wrote:
I know you. You will keep telling people you are fine until long after you are not. You will refuse help until help is no longer enough.
Then came the sentence I needed most.
There is no version of loving me that requires you to stop loving yourself.
He wrote that if the day came when someone else could care for him better than I could, accepting that help would not mean I had failed him.
It would mean I was being honest.
He wrote about the house.
He wanted me to keep living there.
He didn’t want me to sell it or make desperate financial decisions simply to pay for his care.
He had already reviewed our retirement accounts and savings.
He even included balances, account information, and the contact details for our financial adviser, Robert Chen.
Of course David had included a financial plan.
That was exactly who he was.
Then he wrote about Karen.
He told me to let her help.
He knew I would try to shield her from the burden.
He told me that accepting help from our daughter wouldn’t make me weak.
It would allow Karen to do something she desperately wanted to do.
Then he wrote:
You have always cared for everyone else better than you care for yourself. I have loved that about you for forty years, and I have worried about it for just as long. Please let someone worry about you for a while.
