I’m pretty sure Dad had something he wanted to tell me before he died, but I was too willfully ignorant to accept the signs and get my ass home.  He always asked when I was coming up, and this time he asked from the hospital, and I told him “after Thanksgiving.”  I was so excited to host a big gang at my house and to see Liz Phair in concert that Saturday.  I’d spent a fortune on the tickets.  I told my brother I had spent a fortune on the tickets.  I put it out there.  When I told Dad my plans, he said something like, “24 hours makes a difference.”  That SHOULD have been my queue, but instead I asked—I put it on him—“Do you want me to come up sooner?”

You would think that after all this living, after losing my mother the way I did, that I would be cognizant of the impending doom, or that I would recognize a hint.  I think, in fact, I did recognize the hint, but I ignored it.  I put a Liz Phair concert before my dying father.  What does that say about me?  JUST like I did with Mom, I pretended it wasn’t the end, and I went about my business.  Mom said, “I told you so,” when I arrived home to find her in her hospice bed in the living room.   Dad wasn’t cognizant enough to tell me that by the time I got to him.

I KNEW I would regret saying that.  I KNEW I would regret doing that.  The day after the concert, I felt sick.  I took a COVID test, and the result was undeniably positive.  I had to tell my dad, over the phone, that I couldn’t see him for another week.  He was disappointed, of course.  I could hear it in his tone.  He was cognizant then.  What did I do?  What did I do?!