Steve sold the condo where he and Rafaela lived so he could pay for a full-time caregiver to be at the nursing home while he is at work. He wanted someone to talk to Rafaela and read to her. Someone to be with her to shave her legs when staff takes her to the shower room. Someone to check her skin for sores. Someone to make sure she is put in a wheelchair at least once a day, an effort that requires a hydraulic lift.

He reads everything he can on brain injuries and researches new treatments. He adds supplements to the long list of pills that are crushed and then poured through her feeding tube. He’s learned to cut her hair the way she liked to wear it and smoothes lotion with her favorite scent on her arm. He places the bracelets she made on her wrist.

With all of this, in the corner of the room that is theirs, for the hours that he is with her, she is Rafaela.

It’s in the silent, dark moments of the long ride home, as the blackness of the Pacific recedes into the night sky, and the lights on the other side of the bridge call out like a finish line to another day that the loneliness is unbearable.

Steve realizes the woman he loves is not able to love him back.

“She’s not able to put both her arms around my shoulders and tell me it’s going to be OK. Not able to go for walks with me. Not able to cook for me. Not able to wake up in the bed next to me. Not able to take care of me when I’m sick.”

“I could go on and on,” Steve said, crying.

“Not able to enjoy life to the extent she was enjoying it before. That’s one of the reasons it was so hard. Because my wife was so full of life. So full of life. So incredibly full of life.”