Then, when I was twenty-five, Gus started getting tired.
He was only fifty-three.
At first, he blamed age. Then he started stopping halfway up the stairs to catch his breath. He forgot things. His hands shook. Eventually, after Mrs. Sharma from next door practically bullied him into seeing a doctor, the tests came back.
Stage four cancer.
“It’s everywhere,” he told me.
“How long?”
He shrugged. “They gave me numbers. I stopped listening.”
Over the following months, I watched the strongest person I knew disappear piece by piece. Yet even when he could barely stand, he still tried to make my breakfast. He still brushed my hair. He still pretended I couldn’t hear him getting sick in the bathroom at night.
Hospice eventually placed a bed in our living room.
The night before he died, Gus asked everyone to leave. Then he slowly came into my bedroom and sat beside me.
