Our wedding was small, rushed, and perfect.
Our parents, close friends, and several hospital staff came. A nurse tied white ribbon around her bed rail. My mother brought a grocery-store cake with bright blue icing.
Margaret wore a white cardigan over her hospital gown. I wore my only suit.
When I told her she looked beautiful, she glanced at her compression socks.
“Very bridal,” I joked.
“Shut up.”
When I slipped the ring onto her swollen finger, she smiled.
“My husband.”
“My wife.”
For a few minutes, she wasn’t a patient, and I wasn’t a caregiver.
We were newlyweds.
Six days later, Margaret went into surgery wearing that ring.
“I’ll see you afterward,” I said before they wheeled her away.
“You better.”
Those were our last words.
The surgery went badly. One complication became another. Margaret was thirty-one when she died.
She had been my wife for six days.
A few weeks later, her family lawyer, Walter, called.
“I think you should sit down.”
Margaret had written a will before surgery.
Walter began reading.
“To my husband, Daniel, who spent years trying to give me more time when there was none left to give, I leave everything that remains of mine.”
Then he revealed Margaret’s secret.
Her grandfather had created a family trust. Margaret inherited an interest in it after her father died, but most of the money remained protected. She could not simply withdraw it to pay her medical expenses.
If she died unmarried, her remaining share would return to other relatives.
But if she had a legal spouse, that spouse could inherit it.
Her remaining share and a survivorship benefit totaled a little over $400,000.
I was stunned.
Then furious.
“She watched me empty my savings,” I said. “I sold my car. I worried about rent.”
Walter told me to keep listening.
Margaret had expected my anger.
“I didn’t tell you because you would have done something stupid and noble,” she wrote. “You would have turned every dollar into another treatment.”
She was right.
PART 3
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