My dad had bladder cancer. He spent the final weeks of his life in a lot of pain. I remember one moment when he was lying on the couch, with less than a month to live, and my mom was in the kitchen trying to balance the checkbook. And she couldn't figure out where this one check came from. And she kept asking him about it. And he kept saying he didn't know. And she kept pushing him about this check, with this weird insistence, like it was the most important thing in the world, even though he was dying. I remember thinking that it was representative of their whole relationship. And my entire life