My husband left me after 12 years together for a younger woman.
“I climbed the ladder,” he told me. “You stayed a nobody. I need a better partner.”
Four months later, he became seriously ill. His new girlfriend disappeared. I was the only one he had left—and despite everything, I took him in and cared for him until the end.
Weeks later, at his funeral, that same woman approached me and handed me a shoebox. Inside was a journal my husband had been secretly writing during our time apart. Page after page was filled with regret. He called losing me the biggest mistake of his life and wrote that I was the love of his life.
She told me she’d found it by accident, realized she meant nothing to him, and left when he got sick. She’d planned to destroy the journal—but after he died, she gave it to me instead.
Then his lawyer contacted me. My husband had left everything to me. He’d insisted I was the only one who deserved it.
I cried—not over the inheritance, but over the four months we lost. They still feel like a shadow on a love that never truly ended.
But I’m grateful I cared for him in his final days.
If I hadn’t, I know I’d never have forgiven myself.
