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We are standing up when we get the news. If you have a choice, I don’t recommend this.

You’ve seen it on TV and in movies so many times that it’s eerily familar, but then again, it’s totally different. Vital signs march across the big monitor in boldly colored horizontal lines. I can’t shake the resemblance to Star Trek’s sickbay from my mind. I think I’m prepared (I’ve thought that before) but I’m not at all. He looks so small in that bed, so terribly diminished. The worst thing is watching him breathe. The respirator is steady, inexorable. But at the end of each exhalation a small series of tremors runs through his chest.

I didn’t have the privilege of knowing this man when he was good in health, nor even when he could move around without being in great pain. But there was still a vitality, a forcefulness to his presence, and it’s not in this room at all. The man lying in this bed is not my father, not my life partner, and I can’t say how I would feel if he were. But as it is, I don’t feel as if he’s there to say goodbye to; I think he’s already gone.

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