Your mother asked you this morning why the children on the ceiling won't come down. Your father told you very clearly that he needs to pack his bags because the train leaves at four. Your husband looked past you at something you couldn't see and began talking to his own mother, who has been dead for twenty years.

You nodded. You didn't know what else to do. And then you walked out of the room and stood in the hall wondering what was happening to him and whether he was suffering and whether you should call someone.

There is tired, and then there is… “This”.

“This” is not the tired that comes from a bad night or a hard week. “This” is something that has settled into your bones over weeks or months of being on alert every single hour, even the ones when you're technically asleep. It is the exhaustion of waiting for something you can't prepare for and can't stop. Of loving someone who is leaving slowly. Of being needed in ways that don't end and don't let up and don't come with a finish line you can see.

At some point, the person you are caring for may want to talk about the fact that they are dying.

Maybe they'll say it directly. Maybe they'll come at it sideways, mentioning something about their wishes, or asking a question about what happens after, or saying out loud that they're scared. However it arrives, the moment will likely catch you off guard, and your instinct may be to steer away from it, to reassure them, to change the subject, to say something that closes the door they just opened.