The bedroom is warm, hot even, as I walk through the hallway and into the sauna-like space.  Laying quietly on white sheets with a white coverlet is my father, resting peacefully in the late afternoon of a Georgia winter.  I grab his hand and gently lift it as he turns to me in a kind of half-awareness. “Oh! You came home!” he says, and it’s all I can do to hold it together.  I smile and say of course I did, and after a beat, he says, “Now you can make me get better.”  I continue to hold his hand, almost delicate in its frailty, covered in blotches of blue and red.  His fingers barely squeeze my hand, and I sit with him for a few minutes.  He slowly turns his head.  His mouth falls open, and he’s resting again, respiration normal with a hint of a rattling sound deep in his chest.  I lay his hand on his chest and turn to consider other obligations.

My mother is glad I’m home and has already planned for us to head to Kroger to get food for the week.  She’s anticipated my cooking ever since I said I was coming home, and she’s ready for me to get started.  I’m tired, tired in my bones, after a frantic series of flights and car rides to make it to Athens.  Still, we go to the store, and I pick out the ingredients for a series of meals we’ll have this week.  Chicken and rice, tofu and vegetables, salmon, flour for pizza dough, shredded cheese, and the like.  Mom must make two quiches for church tomorrow and we grab the ingredients along with pie crusts, and eggs.

When we return home, my sisters are there in various states of concern and personal struggle.  My middle sister is concerned that my dad won’t drink or eat anything.  Hilliary, my youngest sister, a P.A., launches into the various needs Dad will face in the coming days.  We talk about it all: the many arrangements, financial concerns, and a service.  Dad communicated a few days before that he didn’t want ANYONE at his funeral; in fact, he just wanted us to have dinner together at home.  As usual, Mom overruled THAT request, and we plan an abbreviated service as I will do the eulogy with contributions from everyone.  I’m caught by the mundane nature of planning for the passing of an individual.  The logistics feel wrong in the face of the death of a parent.  It seems like it should be more, somehow.  Of course, and truthfully, it isn’t more.  Maybe it needs to be less.

Mom starts the quiches as we talk, and my sister sits with Dad.  My youngest sister and I talk about medical issues, and her husband is visibly uncomfortable with our matter-of-fact conversation.  He squirms in the chair, looking away, not making eye contact with me or my sister.  With side glances, I can see a kind of horror in his face, a deep abiding fear.  I completely understand it, and at this moment, there’s not a lot of space for questions of our own mortality.  I smile at him and try to include him in the conversation, only for him to stand and slowly walk out of the kitchen.

As the night winds down, we all say goodnight to our dad after giving him his pain meds.  He thanks us, kind of formally, for being there, and we file out of the room.  My Mom gets ready for bed, it’s 10:30PM here, and we settle into the new routine of waiting and watching.  

The house is almost completely silent.