But the heart attack came four years later.
One ordinary afternoon, he left for a job and never came home.
I remember Mom answering the telephone.
I remember the way her face changed before she said a single word.
I remember the hospital hallway, the bright lights, and a doctor speaking gently while the world around me seemed to lose all its sound.
After the funeral, Mom became a different person.
She worked harder. She worried more. Every unexpected bill seemed to frighten her, and every conversation about the future somehow returned to money.
When I spoke about Dad, she rarely smiled.
“He loved us,” she’d say. “But love didn’t pay the bills.”
I knew she had suffered too. She had lost her husband, her financial security, and the future she thought they would share.
For a long time, I tried to understand her bitterness.
But I never accepted her conclusion that my father had failed us.
