My sister’s name is Darlene. I want to say that first because the rest of this is going to make me sound like I don’t care about her, and I do. I care about her more than I know how to say right now.

She was sitting at my kitchen table Thursday night with both hands wrapped around a mug of coffee she wasn’t drinking. Just holding it. She looked tired in a way that doesn’t go away after a good night’s sleep. I’ve known that look for years. I’ve seen it on patients. I’ve seen it on nurses who’ve been on the floor too long. It’s the kind of tired that gets into your bones and stays there.

“I need you to help me,” she said. That was it. That was how she started.

I’m the executor of my daddy’s will. His name was James Earl Prewitt, and he died six weeks ago at 81 years old, in the bedroom he was born in, in a house that has been in our family since 1947. I’m the one he trusted to make sure his wishes got carried out. And his wishes are what’s tearing this family apart right now.

Here’s what the will says. My brother Gary gets the farm. All 340 acres, the house, the equipment, everything. Darlene gets five thousand dollars. I get the truck and some furniture and a small amount of cash. None of that bothers me, honestly. I’m a nurse, I have a job, I have a house. I’m fine. But Darlene.

Darlene moved home in 2015. She had just gone through a divorce and Daddy was starting to slip, and she said she’d stay for a little while to help out. That little while turned into ten years.

She quit her job at the bank after the first year because he needed more than part-time care. She found a few hours of remote bookkeeping work to keep herself going, but mostly she was just there. Every day. Taking care of him.

I’m a nurse. I want to be real clear about what I mean when I say she took care of him, because I don’t think people who haven’t done it truly understand. I mean she managed his medications, and there were eleven of them at the end, all at different times, some with food, some without, some that would have been genuinely dangerous if she’d mixed the timing up. I mean she drove him to every appointment. I mean she bathed him when he couldn’t do it himself anymore. I mean she was up at two in the morning when he fell getting to the bathroom and she sat on the floor with him until the home health aide got there because she wasn’t strong enough to lift him on her own and she didn’t want him to be alone on that floor. She told me that part only once. I think about it more than she knows.