After she died, he was never the same. Something was missing in him. He never laughed the same. He never had that lightness.

Every Christmas for a couple of years, he would tell me that it was his last Christmas. He planned on dying. This made me cry. Every time. I had just lost her. Right before Christmas. I couldn't face losing him too. But I lost him anyway. He retreated into a bad place, while I watched. He wasn't alone. Most of them did. All I wanted was one of them to be there. To take her place. To try. But she took the fight with her, leaving them flailing about.

He lived for another 30 years. He told me that the plan had always been for him to die first, and for her to continue on. After a while, he stabilized and became himself. But never the same. Not to me. I think that he was embarrassed that I had seen him so broken. That he had shown what he saw as weakness. Or I was just too different for him to relate. He had others for that. We just didn't have much in common.

And he did try. One September, he baked a birthday cake for my Great-Grandma. It was lopsided, white with red frosting letters. Not very pretty. But it almost made me cry because he had made it. Himself.

When I was small, before she died, he called me his Indian Princess. I had long brownish braids, and loved to jump on their bed. When I went home for the night, he would quote Shakespeare.

"Goodnight, goodnight. Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say goodnight til it be morrow."