Benni and I were married for almost 61 years, until our late 80s. We were not a perfect match. He was an early bird; I’m a night owl. He watched sports and news; I binge British crime dramas. He liked home; I like out.

On the other hand, he took an abiding interest in my work, drove me wherever I had to go and always left me the last few cherries in the bowl. We raised a great kid. We traveled. We had a good life.

And then we got old, and the fun was over. Benni got all kinds of sick: prostate, kidney, heart, eyes, thyroid, arthritis, sepsis. I spent hours in emergency rooms and I.C.U. units. I spent days on hold with insurance companies and banks and home health care agencies.

I had always believed I would be too selfish and squeamish to be a caretaker, but somehow I managed to clean his surgical wounds, change his catheters and help him shower. That was tough, but even tougher was watching Benni’s mind dissolve into fogginess.

He would decide to make himself a morning snack by boiling three pounds of potatoes and then forget to turn off the stove until the smoke alarm went off. He couldn’t remember how to work the TV remote and spent hours just staring into space. In my darkest moments, I reread a Buddhist quote a friend had shared: “Suffering begins when the mind expects permanence from what is designed to change. Accept that nothing will remain the same.”

I had to accept that the marriage I cherished no longer existed, and the husband I cherished had disappeared.