Then he told me what Robert had written in his final letters.
“I went there every day.”
He’d worried about me. Not because I couldn’t manage money or I couldn’t live alone.
But because I never seemed to believe I was allowed to choose myself.
“He said you gave everything away,” Arthur told me. “Time. Money. Energy.”
I looked down.
He’d worried
about me.
“Robert said you were happiest when you were planning trips you never took.”
My throat tightened.
Arthur continued.
“Your husband wrote that his biggest regret wasn’t dying before retirement. It was that he helped you believe life could always be postponed.”
Tears ran down my face; I finally opened the envelope.
“His biggest regret.”
***
Robert’s letter was four pages long.
I couldn’t read it all aloud without stopping, but one part broke me.
“Abigail,
If you’re reading this in Australia, then you’ve finally done something we’ve both been talking about since we were young. And if I’m not there with you, don’t turn the trip into a memorial for me. See things because you want to see them.”
