After forty years of a happy marriage, my husband suddenly fell gravely ill. At his bedside appeared a young man claiming to be my husband's son. With tears in his voice, he spoke of the decades of love between my husband and his first love, and how they had never been able to be together. “Auntie, my dad was forced by a sense of duty to take care of you for decades. Please give him back to my mom for the time he has left.” I listened in a daze, suddenly feeling that I had wasted forty years of my life on a dog.
