They sent me home from hospital with pills and a scheduled appointment with the mental health team. Poor Erik. While coping with his mother's coming demise, and his apparent inability to fly off to Sweden to see her and his sister (I later learned from him that Greta had ordered him to stay behind, to mind me), he became a constant presence with me. Only to sleep or use the bathroom would he leave my side. And then, one day, it occurred to me that here I was, swallowed up in self-pity over my mental illness, and my sense of absolute failure as a husband, and as a man. And then, one day, I asked Erik about his Mom. He had been on Skype with her the other day, but seemed very stoic about everything. And then, as we were sitting at the breakfast table, facing me, his sister in young male form, but with warm brown eyes instead of cold impaling blue eyes, and then he went pale, began to shake, began to shudder, to tremble, and suddenly he was crying, and he sat there in front of his coffee, a weeping whimpering, streaming mess, and then I pulled my chair over next to him, and put my arms around him, and he let me hold him and go on holding him as he wept like he had never wept before. and that was when my recovery began....
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