We never married, Matthew and I. We kept those values with us for the rest of our lives. But with the 80s came the end of our era and our return to the rat race. We bought a house, had three children and worked eighty hours a week.

It was 1993 when the diagnosis came. I gripped Matthew’s hand as the Doctor spoke in his neutral monotone.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Hersey. It’s cancer.”
They couldn’t cure it back then, and it almost killed me as much as it did him, watching him thin and weaken. We spent long nights listening to the Kinks from our teenhood, and the songs of our romance.

It wasn’t sudden, the way he died. Over the two longest years, life slowly ebbed from him. One warm night, he lay his head down in my lap.
“Cara,” he said, looking up at me with the same eyes that first caught my attention.
“Yes?” I whispered, tears gathering behind my eyes.
“I’m tired.”
“Sleep then, I’ll be right here.”
“I love you, Cara,” he said closing his eyes, and I wept as I realised they would never open again.