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Produced by the ILAB at WBUR Boston.

From The New York Times and WBUR Boston, this is Modern Love.

Stories of Love, Loss and Redemption.

I'm your host, Megna Chakrabardi.

Let's be honest, when you're in a loving relationship, you often do things for your partner that you'd rather not do, because that's love.

But have you ever gotten a request from your significant other that might go a little too far?

Judith Newman did, and she writes about it in her essay, He's Going Back to His Former Wife, Sort of.

It's read by Marissa Tome, who's starring now in The Rose Tattoo on Broadway.

There's something I have to tell you, John said.

Do you remember ever wanting to hear the sentence after that one?

I don't.

There's something I have to tell you has never in the history of man, been followed by, We Won the Lottery, or I have discovered a cure for blindness.

This is especially true when the person uttering that sentence is your husband, and he is about to die.

I'm not a big believer in deathbed, Confessions. I intend to keep it all to myself, unless my own, there's something I have to tell you, is you were always my favorite.

Two, whoever walks in the room. Everybody should be at my deathbed. You won't regret it.

John and I were lying in the cramped hospital bed that I had installed in my bedroom, because I had decided to go full pioneer woman and tend to him myself.

I'm still not sure why, normally I'm the queen of outsourcing. Also, I'm a terrible nurse.

But my decision to care for him at home was made in an instant. He wanted to be here. Our 16 year old twin boys desperately wanted him here.

And so did I, despite the fact that this was the first time we had lived together in 25 years of marriage. We had always kept separate homes.

A week earlier, we had learned that John had three separate forms of cancer, pancreatic, liver, and prostate. A cancer over a chiever, as I told him.

I can't remember the Yiddish phrase his doctor used to describe the usefulness of chemo or radiation, but it roughly translated to pissing in the wind.

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