He didn’t tap back. He just turned his palm up and gripped my fingers. His grip was weak, but it was there.

I sat there for a long time. I started thinking about those three taps. Three taps. All these months, he hadn’t been having a seizure. He hadn’t been shaking. He had been trying to tell me something, and I had been too busy worrying about medical charts to hear him.

“You’re tired,” I whispered.

He didn’t move, but his eyes closed for a second.

“You want to go,” I said.

My voice didn’t even sound like mine. It sounded thin, like paper. The house felt huge. The ticking of the clock on the wall was so loud I thought it might shatter the windows. I looked at the medicine bottles on the counter. I looked at the hospital bed we’d rented. I looked at the man who had been my entire life for five decades.

He opened his eyes again. He tapped my hand once.

“I know,” I said. “I know, Wilbur.”

I went to the kitchen and made a pot of tea. My hands were shaking so bad I chipped one of the good mugs. I didn’t care. I went back and sat by him. I didn’t read the paper. I didn’t talk about the neighbor’s dog. I just sat there and held his hand.

I realized then that I had been keeping him here for me.

I was the one who needed the sound. I was the one who was scared of the quiet. He was just waiting for me to be brave enough to stop talking.

The next three days were a blur. I didn’t call the doctor back about the seizure tests. I didn’t talk to Brenda the nurse. I just stayed in that room with him. We didn’t need words. We had the code.

I finally understood that those three taps hadn’t been a request for help. It was a plea. He was saying, “Let me go.”

Today, the house is so quiet I can hear the refrigerator humming in the kitchen. It’s been a week since I stopped the extra meds, since I let him just be. I’m sitting in his chair now. I have his hand in mine.

I tapped it four times, just like in 1971. He didn’t tap back this time. He doesn’t have to anymore.

I’m not a hero. I’m just an old woman who finally realized that love isn’t always about fighting to keep someone here. Sometimes, love is just knowing when to be quiet and let them walk out the door. I’m sitting here in the dark, and for the first time, I don’t mind the silence at all.