My mother was diagnosed with heart failure when I was thirty-eight.

My father had died years before. I was an only child. There wasn’t anybody else.

At first, she could live on her own. She had her little house across town. I drove over twice a week to check on her, bring her groceries, make sure she was taking her pills.

Then she fell in her kitchen and couldn’t get up. She lay on the floor for six hours before a neighbor found her.

After that, she moved in with us.

She lived with us for three years.

I can’t really explain those three years to someone who hasn’t done it. I’ll try.

I organized her medication. Eleven different pills, some twice a day, some three times. A big plastic box with little compartments for every day of the week. I refilled it every Sunday night at the kitchen table.

I took her to every doctor’s appointment. Cardiologist. Nephrologist. Her regular doctor. The lab, every two weeks, for blood work.

I helped her bathe. At first, she just needed someone to help her get in and out of the tub. Then she needed help washing her back. Then she needed help with everything.

At night, when she couldn’t be left alone, when her breathing got bad and her legs swelled up and she got confused, I slept on the couch in the living room. Right outside the door to the guest room, where she was. So I could hear her if she called.

She called at all hours.

Claire. Claire, I can’t breathe.

Claire, where am I?

Claire, I need the bathroom.

Claire, is it morning yet?

Daniel helped when he could. He really did. I want to be fair.

He built a ramp to the back door so she could get out to the garden in her wheelchair. He drove her to appointments when I was sick. He sat with her on Sunday afternoons and watched old movies with her, the black-and-white ones she loved.

But I was the one she called. Always. At two in the morning. At four in the morning. It was always Claire.

And for three years, I was so tired that I didn’t remember what not being tired felt like.

Somewhere in there, our marriage turned into something else.

It turned into a schedule. A list of appointments. A conversation about whose turn it was to pick up Mom’s prescriptions. Text messages that just said Did you give her the 4pm pill? and Running late, can you get Josh from practice?

We stopped going to the movies. We stopped going out to dinner. We stopped sitting on the back porch at night, talking. We stopped talking about anything at all except Mom.

I didn’t notice it happening.

I was too tired to notice.

My mother died in March. In the guest room. In the middle of the night.

I was asleep on the couch, right outside her door. I didn’t hear her. That’s the thing I still think about. After three years of hearing every sound she ever made, I didn’t hear the last one.

I found her in the morning.

At the funeral, people kept telling me I’d done everything right. That she’d been lucky to have me. That I should be proud.

I nodded and thanked them.

After the funeral, at home, I sat in the living room on the couch. The couch I’d slept on for three years. Daniel sat down next to me.

“How are you doing?” he said quietly.

I didn’t answer right away.

Then I told him something I’d never told anyone. Something I was ashamed of.

“I feel guilty,” I said.

“For what? Claire, you did everything for her.”

“I feel guilty,” I said, “because part of me is relieved. That I can sleep through the night now. That I don’t have to listen for her.” I put my face in my hands. “What kind of person feels relieved when her mother dies?”

He put his arm around me.

“An exhausted one,” he said.

I leaned against him.

“I want my life back,” I said into his shoulder. “I want us back. I want to go to the movies. I want to go out to dinner on a Friday night. I want a whole weekend where nobody needs anything from me.”

He didn’t say anything.

He just held me. For a long time.

I didn’t notice that his hand was shaking.