Before cancer, my husband, Robert, was the kind of man who could turn anything into art.
He painted landscapes, portraits, old furniture, and even Emma’s lunch bags when she was little. Once, he drew a tiny dragon on her paper sack because she said school felt scary.
“There,” he told her. “Now you have a guard dragon.”
Emma was six then. She carried that bag for three days and refused to let me throw it away.
That was Robert. Gentle, funny, and impossible not to love.
When the doctors told us the cancer had spread, I expected him to lose that part of himself. Some days, he did. He grew thin. His hands shook. He got tired walking from the bedroom to the porch.
But whenever Emma walked in, his face changed.