Standing alone in her silent kitchen, I realized that the money she’d asked for had never really been about overdue bills or some vague emergency. It was her way of finishing one last, deliberate act of love. The groceries lined up neatly on the counter, the pale yellow gift bag, the scarf in my favorite shades of blue — every detail whispered that she’d been thinking of me, carefully, consistently, even as her own time was running out. Her note, the handwriting shaky but heartbreakingly precise, made something else just as clear: she didn’t want to be a burden; she wanted to leave a little warmth behind and slip away without fuss