His depression came in frequent cycles, often lingering for days. During those days, if I brought home a pint of mint-chocolate-chip ice cream (Joe’s favorite), it would go unremarked upon or even uneaten.

No, he did not want to go to a movie or go dancing or have sex. Any offering, even that of my own body, would tumble into the gray sinkhole, rendering me ineffectual and pathetic. I learned that the best way to love Joe during those times was to leave him alone.

“You can’t cure depression,” Joe told me once. “You can only get better at living with it.”

I got better at living with it; I started buying my own favorite flavor of ice cream instead of his. And when I finally drove across Portland to the Oregon Humane Society one day in August, I did it secretly, rebelliously and entirely for my own inarticulate reasons.

It had been a particularly difficult week. My carefully honed strategy for loving a depressed man was to help myself instead of trying to help him. “And today,” I thought as I pulled in to the humane society parking lot, “I am helping myself to a kitten.”

When Joe arrived home that evening, the kitten — just a pinch of striped fluff — popped out from under the bed. I took a long breath, ready to defend my decision.

But then I saw her sly green eyes holding his handsome sad ones, and it seemed as if there were fireworks and unicorns leaping, the aurora borealis descending between them. When the kitten tried to vogue, swoon and crab-leap sideways all at once, consequently tripping over her paws, I think Joe’s eyeballs may have rolled back into his head to reveal two glittery pink hearts pasted onto his sockets in lieu of pupils.