Five Years a Writer

One day towards the end of my father’s life, while he was still at home but no longer the man of whom my mother had thought on first meeting him, 'If he were to ask me to go to India with him tonight , I would go' — one day, six-decades-plus later, my friend J was helping my mother with some banking. J asked Mum something about how she was doing given Dad’s state of health — and Mum replied, 'Well, the man I would have gone to India with, without even knowing his name, that man is long gone.'   By this point, Mum had been caregiver to Dad following a stroke about ten years prior and, though she never said a word to me or my siblings, she was obviously tired on many levels — fulfilling her duty, fine, but possibly no longer experiencing flutters of unfettered joy in the relationship.   I never talked to my mother about the toll my father’s illness took on her (she was intensely private about such matters) and now that she is dead, I cannot ever have that conversation wit...