Chapter 4 - Fear Wearing Love's Coat
For the entire year leading up to this trip, my daughter had treated me like I was preparing to cross the Atlantic in a rowboat. Articles about scams. Falls. Food poisoning. Blood clots. She'd even turned on location sharing on my phone and called it "convenient." I'd nearly canceled the whole cruise just to stop hearing about every possible way it might kill me.
"She had no right to keep that from me," I said.
"No," Gerald agreed.
"You agree with me?"
"She was scared."
"That doesn't make it right."
"No, it doesn't."
Something in the way he said it made me ask about his late wife. He'd mentioned earlier in the week that Diane had Alzheimer's. What he hadn't told me was how much that had reshaped him.
"For the last two years she was home," he said quietly, "I made almost every decision for her."
"She had Alzheimer's, Gerald. Of course you did."
"At first, yes. I had to." He looked at the floor. "Then I got used to it. I decided where she went. Who she saw. What was safe, what wasn't. There were still stretches where Diane could've chosen for herself. I just stopped asking."
He looked back up at me. "Fear can dress itself up as love if you let it."
The words landed harder than I expected.
Gerald told me that when Nora contacted the cruise company, she'd sounded terrified of losing me. He'd spoken with her once, directly.
"What did she tell you?"
"That you're stubborn."
I rolled my eyes. "Obviously."
"She also said you hate being handled like you're made of glass."
"She knows that about me?"
"Very clearly."
May you like
"Then why would she do all this behind my back?"
"Because knowing the fear is making you act badly doesn't make the fear go away."
