My wife secretly opened a savings account the day we got married. She deposited $100 a month from her paycheck. I never noticed. She did it for twenty-seven years. When she was diagnosed with terminal cancer, she sat me down and said, “I need to show you something.” She opened her laptop and showed me the account. Balance: $62,000 with interest. I stared at the screen. “Why?” I whispered. She said, “Because I knew one of us would get sick first. And I didn’t want the other one to suffer.” She handed me a folder. Inside were prepaid funeral arrangements, a life insurance policy I didn’t know about, a letter to our children, and a note to me that said, “I loved every day. Even the hard ones. Especially the hard ones.” She died three months later. At the funeral, our son read her letter to the family. When he got to the last paragraph, he stopped, looked at me, and asked, “Dad, did you know about this?” I shook my head. The room fell silent as he continued reading. 

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