And there were. With Stephen away, I fudged the kids’ bedtimes. Sometimes I took them out for breakfast. They were shockingly young when they watched “The Godfather.” Along with the extra fun came extra duties. At night, I’d be the one, not Stephen, to take out the garbage and lock the doors. Chores get assigned in marriage, but a short separation reminds you what you can still do perfectly well by yourself. After the children were asleep, I rediscovered, too, how much more writing you can get done when you’re not also having a conversation, let alone having sex or dinner.

My monosyllabic shtick slowly turned into confident restraint. I missed Stephen, but it was better to want him than to need him. The haunting mystery of any marriage — “What would I do without you?” — is often a rhetorical endearment. In my case, it was just practical: What would I do without him? What I had to. And sometimes I’d have fun.

After more than two decades of marriage, we had finally gotten it down. We would talk when we could and keep it brief. If something big arose, we would share it. But mainly, we said what people in love say. The freedom from all the details allowed us to miss each other, and coming together again suddenly provided a fluttery joy.

Good thing we had found all this wisdom, because it came just before my doctor told me, seven years ago now, that I had multiple sclerosis. My energy, even for simple tasks, became finite. Daily, my batteries drained. My balance was off. I broke an arm.

I would lie in bed and look at a window and think, “I need to close that.” And then, half an hour later, I’d think, “I need to close that.” The children were older — a huge help. But all of our lives were altered.

Stephen was now head of a global news agency with offices all over the world, and yet he was traveling less than he had in a decade. The first year or two after I got sick, he kept his travel stateside. But it was clear he would have to go much farther to spend real time with colleagues abroad.