I'm finally really mourning my father. He's been gone since 1994. There's a very detailed and eloquent passage in the book I'm reading—the conflicted daughter at her dad's bedside a final reconciliation—but so not movie-of-the-week. I'm just sitting up in bed with this incipient anxiety, random exposure/paranoia Covid test result next 15 minutes, so then I guess it makes sense to be a bit
gloomy.

How bittersweet. But also I've been aware for a while that I'm especially tender. A familiar piece of music or an unexpectedly raw scene in an episode and I find myself in tears.

It crosses my mind at random moments that I do not now, nor will I ever, know how my father actually experienced his death. I didn't go to the hospital; I made up an excuse of having a cold, yet every day I called the nurses' station to check on him. His partner was there with him. So there's that. And once clear that it was near the end, they sent him home with her.

My older brother has always exhibited a morbid side, probably exacerbated by his Vietnam War tour. Like in '70, freshly mustered out, he managed to creep into a morgue and steal a head and then boil it in a kettle in his backyard so that he could examine the skull. Also insisted until maybe 15 years ago that he wasn't a "Veteran" since his MOS was dental tech. Thank god a friend from those days talked to him.

He went over to Dad's apartment and, as he described it, sat there at the bedside and just maintained eye contact. Even now I find that a leetle creepy. Couple of days of that and about 2:30 a.m. he called me to tell me the buffalo's gone. So I drove over there on the empty freeway with a sense of dread. Their tiny apartment was so still. It was obvious that whoever he was was gone. Touching his chest and the odd sensation of peace, no normal response, no heartbeat, no breath. The slightly open mouth. My brother asked me to take care of business. I could do that.

Then he started going off on taking a door off its hinges and transporting the body to wherever, which hadn't even been determined yet. We had to calm him down. It was pointed out the impractibility of getting a door through a door frame flat, it was not going to happen and we were on the freaking second floor with a bunch of steps as well. I heard myself giving my credit card number to the guy on the line at the Neptune Society; nobody else volunteered and I've never been paid back.

Trying to remember where my younger brother was during all this and I'd have to check with him but I have the impression that he deliberately kept himself away. Which is ironic because he's the one who just in the last couple of months has been all over the Ancestry website with me filling out our Jones family tree as best we can. It's almost like playing a video game these days especially if you have provided your DNA and you get a Verified goddamn 5th cousin twice removed. Some of them are coy and keep it private, which is no fun at all.

9th GGJan Garretson / Garritszen Van Vorst / Derhoff, 1632-1695
11th GG Hannah Fosdick, 1615-1681
14th GG Lady Isabell Dwarihouse, 1550-1624
10th GG Elizabeth Bridel-Bradle Dumminghan, 1595-1640 (my favorite so far)

At 4am, two strangers show up, do their job respectfully and quietly and leave with the body. There are hugs and I go back to my car. It's still dark out. I have a moment looking up at the stars, remembering sensations: being on the sidewalk, holding onto my dad's giant finger, the pant leg of his suit flapping against my elbow. I can still feel it.

He and I are the same age.

My test is negative.