[[writing]]

Everything happened so fast.

The diagnosis, the treatment that made him ill and eventually put him in the hospital for those last 10 days.

The cops showed up twice in that last 24 hour period. The nurses at their greeting station on the Veterans Administration hospital ward spoke quickly and quietly to them; stressfully pointing towards my brother who was desperately attempting to command a situation he had no control over -- his father's life, on the brink of ending.

The whole thing was chaos with ancestral family baggage and pain and love all at once.

All of dad's children were present, we are five. Along with a handful of sisters' husbands who'd been with us for decades. We had been at the hospital on an off for 10 days. No-one knew exactly what was causing his organs to shut down. Attempts were made to triage. Eventually we all came to the same decision. Clarity finally emerging from the exhaustive 10 days of confusion, drugs, interventions, fragmented events, tears, and arguments.

"There's a hospice ward in the basement of the hospital, your best course is to allow us to put him there"

At this point we all knew; and were prepared for another round of being with dad as his life ended. Would it be a couple weeks? A month? We were all so tired. I told everyone I would take the first shift.

"Please go get some rest.", I said.

My brother, and sisters with their husbands, gradually shuffled out after saying their goodbyes to dad, inspecting the drab hospital bed on the bottom floor in a small sterile-feeling room; expecting to be back after some rest.

But dad was not a guy known for niceties or staying anywhere longer than a targeted survey of any given situation warranted. His patience was short and reserved only for certain long views - his vegetable gardens and, because precision and excellence required it, his work as a painter and wallpaper-hanger.

To our surprise and despite what should have been predictable, his stay in the small room on the bottom level of the VA hospital was shockingly short.

I had perched on the window seat and started some reading, with my line of sight roughly 6 feet from the head of the bed where my heavily sedated father quietly lay, making sure I could see and hear him.