Not his memory.
Not his final decision.
Us.
The people he loved most.
He had known grief might tempt us to hold too tightly—to him, to the past, and eventually to his daughter.
So even while he was dying, he had found one final way to remind us that love was not ownership.
It wasn’t deciding for someone.
It wasn’t turning another person into proof that someone we loved had once existed.
Sometimes love meant respecting a choice that hurt.
Sometimes it meant letting go of the person you desperately wanted to keep.
And sometimes it meant looking at a little girl with her entire life ahead of her and understanding that she did not exist to replace anyone.
Cecelia would know her father.
I would tell her about the porch, the terrible baby-name suggestions, the way he always tried to make me laugh when I was frightened.
