A life after a long responsibility can include joy that does not have to justify the years before it.

After years of caring for someone, pleasure can arrive with a strange charge attached, as though enjoying anything now would say something about the time that came before. It does not. The years were what they were, and neither reading of them is undone by a good afternoon later. Joy is not a verdict on the past.

If something small appeals to you, let yourself have it without the accompanying accounting. Start with an hour rather than a plan for the rest of your life. You are allowed to find out slowly what you like now.