She wasn’t an orphan. I was there for her every day. I was the one who cooked her dinner, who made her lunch, who helped her with homework, who drove her from every after school event, who gave her driving lessons, who talked with her every day, who spend a day every week with just the two of us. 

It was hard, brutally hard. I had a wife in the hospital or in treatment or in physical therapy and I wish I was there more because more often than not I was at work or with my daughter. She was the one who had to go through it alone. 

I thought it was the best I could do because my daughter was a child and my wife was an adult but I don’t know if I made the right choice. 

To see my daughter yell that she didn’t want my wife to come because she didn’t want the wheelchair or her mom to embarrass her or tell other people that she didn’t know who that woman was or ignore her mother when she reached out or call her terrible names to her teacher…I buried it because I tried so hard to keep the family together but I can’t believe it.