It was a glass of bourbon after work. Then two. Then a bottle of wine with dinner that I never touched. He told me he was just "taking the edge off" — and I believed him, because the edge he was taking off was watching his mother die in a hospice bed in Raleigh. I would have taken any edge off too. But then came the nights he'd sleep on the couch because he couldn't climb the stairs. The mornings I found him on the kitchen floor with the fridge door open. The time he showed up to his sister's baby shower so drunk he told her unborn daughter, out loud, that life was a trap and nobody warned you. His sister hasn't spoken to him since. I stayed. I stayed because I loved the man who held my hand in that hospice room and cried into my shoulder, who whispered "I'm not going to be okay, I'm telling you now, I'm not going to be okay." I stayed because I made a promise to a dying woman. Which makes what I said to him that Friday night even worse.