While I Sat Beside My Dying Husband, My Daughter Used My Home As Collateral — So I Prepared My Response

bed as cancer slowly claimed him. Forty-seven days of holding his hand, moistening his lips when morphine left him parched, reading aloud his favorite Mary Oliver poetry in the small hours when pain kept him from sleep. Forty-seven days of humming the hymn we had both known since childhood—Be Thou My Vision—because something about the tune made his continue reading …