By fall Dad is incontinent and, even with a walker, has forgotten that one foot needs to go before the other. The twin who switched in the middle of double dates no longer remembers he has a brother. I walk down to the beach near the adult home where he lives, sit on the log where we often sat, and watch the waves. I think about how both of us are caught in the green curl of life, our paths braided together, all the way to the end.

The next day Dad’s sister Fran and his identical twin brother Harold come from Eastern Washington for a visit, a three-hour trip, oneway. Hard on them at their age. Side by side, the twins are no longer identical. Dad is just a smudged likeness, fading and shapeless.

I mediate a one-sided conversation with Harold and Fran, while Dad looks at the strangers sitting in front of him; his eyes wander from one face to the other and back. Finally, he just looks at his hands folded together in his lap.

My uncle is speechless for one of the few times in his life – possibly, no, probably terrified at what he sees. Fran, always placid and stoic, holds a bulge of tears just behind the surface of her eyes. Back at his car my uncle exclaims “Jesus!” His hand is on the door handle. “Jesus,” he repeats and looks at the ground.

“Is it Alzheimer’s?” Fran asks.

“Hard to know,” I tell her. “The only way to be certain would be an autopsy.”

“No autopsy,” she says.

“No autopsy,” Harold repeats, still looking at the ground.

They drive away, two stiff figures not once looking back.

Later that month the owner of Laurel Gardens requests that we set a meeting to talk about Dad. I sit in my car for long moments and stare out the windshield before going inside. It can’t be good news. A few russet leaves from the crabapple tree by the front door blow against my wipers and stick there in the rain. It’s almost Thanksgiving.

“He’s become a two-person assist,” she says. What she means is that Dad can’t get out of a chair without two people at his side physically lifting his body into a standing position. Unfortunately, the small facility normally has just one caregiver per shift.

“I can’t risk injury to my staff,” she says. “You’ll have to find a new place for him.”

I gulp some air and swallow past the ball lodged in the bottom of my throat. “Nursing home, I guess.”

If I know anything about what’s left of my dad I know he will fear change. He feels safe here. The owner nods. Her eyes glisten. She knows, too.

Three days later, the owner calls: “Your Dad’s had a stroke. He’s bedridden.” She sounds almost happy. “We can take care of him now.” She tells me there’s no hurry, but I need to sign a different care plan.

“He’s conscious,” the owner said. “The doctor came and prescribed sublingual morphine.”

She answers one of my many questions as soon as I arrive. The morphine is dripped under the tongue on a scheduled basis to keep Dad free of pain – the pain of his organs shutting down. He can’t swallow; he can’t eat; he can’t drink.

I call Harold and Fran. “If you want to come visit again, now is the time.”

“No” and “No” is their reply.

“You agreed to withhold tube feeding, right?”

They say “Yes” and “Yes.” My aunt adds softly, “He’s not in pain, is he? I can’t stand to think of him in pain.”

“No, he’s not,” I tell her, equally softly, “We’re giving him medication for that.”

I call my sister. Annie and Mark are just beginning a vacation. They’ve been in Mexico less than 24 hours.

“Ah, jeez,” she says, “how long do you think?”

“I don’t know. The caregivers tell me days or a week. Nobody knows. You told me you wanted to be here, so I called. He’s still conscious.”

“Ah jeez,” she repeats, and a day later walks into Dad’s room.

He rolls his head to one side and a smile lights up his face. A real smile. The first one I’ve seen in a long, long time. “

“Hi sweetheart,” he says.

Annie gives me the look that only sisters give each other when one wants to kill the other. “We need to talk,” she says, jerking her head to the door.

Outside, under gray, weeping skies, Annie and Mark hover around me like birds of prey.

“Ask anybody – that’s the first time he’s talked since the stroke!”

We return to Dad’s room. He smiles again, the way a baby smiles when you dangle something pretty and shiny in front of its face. A bright watery light flares in his eyes. He turns his head to look at the picture on the wall next to his bed – the picture of my sis and I, five and six years old, in matching blue corduroy jumpers and yellow short-sleeve sweaters.

Annie and I look at each other, palming away tears.

Dad never speaks again.

While Annie’s in town we decide to finalize the funeral arrangements for the open-casket memorial service Harold and Fran want. We have no idea what Dad wants.

To get to the caskets we walk through a display of cremation containers for both humans and pets. First are the urns: cloisonné, engraved bronze, brass, granite, and pewter. Then the photo cubes, glass globes, carved wood boxes. Then the jewelry made from ash: rings, bracelets, necklaces. Then the garden art: birdbaths, humming bird feeders, fountains, sundials, glass flowers. Then the portraits of your loved one painted with their ashes. Finally, in a separate room, a selection of model caskets – several cut away to demonstrate various layers of construction.

The one we choose is made from cherry wood. Its joints are seamless, the handles bronze. The woodworking is impeccable, the kind of woodworking Dad used to do. We agree that he would like it, if he had a say in all this.

“But I don’t like the lining,” my sister says. Her lower lip starts to jut out. I recognize the beginning of every childhood argument we ever had. “I want to remember Daddy lying in something nice.”

“Okay, you pick – I don’t care.”

Annie inherited Dad’s redheaded gene, and along with it the famous redhead rebelliousness. As the oldest, it was my responsibility to keep her in check, like that was even possible.

It was her idea to paint flowers on the bathroom wall with Mom’s lipstick. It was her idea to stage a duel with Mom’s best butcher knives after watching an episode of Zorro on TV. Alerted by the clanging, Mom found us feinting and charging at close range while throwing imaginary cloaks over our shoulders. I’ve never heard a shriek like that since.

Even though most of the time it was her idea, I got spanked, too.

“You’re supposed to keep your little sister out of trouble!”

After one episode, we were banished to our shared bedroom for a nap. Annie knelt on her bed while I was asleep, spread a hairpin and plugged it into the electrical socket above her pillow. Impressive fireworks and screaming resulted as her bed caught fire. At least I didn’t get spanked for that one.

Annie wouldn’t eat peas. She hated peas. So she hid them: in her pockets, behind the curtains on the windowsill next to her chair, in the ketchup bottle, up her sleeves. She had to sit at the table until they were all gone. “Eat your peas; the children in China are starving.”

Annie didn’t care. She had, and still has, an impressive ability to pout: her lower lip extends as far as humanly possible, like it’s doing now.

The funeral home director brings out samples of casket liners, from silk to polka dot. As Annie sorts through them he says, “We also need to talk about vaults.”

“Vaults?” Annie and I look at each other. Apparently, a concrete liner or vault is required at the cemetery where Dad will be buried, so the ground doesn’t collapse on top of the casket. It makes it easier to mow the grass.

He shows us a brochure. “This one here is lined with metal, strong enough to withstand a direct hit by a Scud missile.”

My sister and I opt for the simplest and cheapest. We buy an “air tray,” a shipping container for 26 27 Dad’s casket, and pay for a delivery van to take him back to Eastern Washington, to the valley filled with orchards where Dad’s burial will take place. We sign a lot of paperwork and determine how many death certificates we’ll need.

And even though Dad’s now in a coma, we go back to his room and sit at his bedside and tell him what we’ve done.

A Scud missile. The least of our worries.

In the middle of that night, Belli, one of Dad’s caregivers, calls. “His heart not good. You come.”

Annie is already there when I arrive. “I left Mark in bed. One of us has to get some sleep.”

Belli brings us some tea. We watch Dad breathing, mouth open, chest rising and falling irregularly, almost imperceptibly. He stops for a long interval.

We lean in, our hearts racing. Then he takes a long shuddering breath and his struggle begins again.

We sit back in our chairs, hearts calming. Time after time he stops breathing and then begins again. It’s exhausting.

Around 4 a.m. Belli administers some morphine. Dad’s breathing stabilizes. She takes his pulse. “Is good.”

Annie and I stumble to our cars. I don’t remember if we even said goodnight to each other.

At lunch the next day Annie tells me, “We’ve decided to go back to work. Save whatever’s left of our vacation.” Her blue eyes are dark-circled, shiny. She slumps in the restaurant booth. She’s my little sister all over again, needing my protection, the sister I wouldn’t let walk because I thought she might hurt herself.

“I’ll call, no matter what the time,” I say. She nods and looks out the window at a thin thread of birds in the sky, heading south.

For five more days I wash up regular as tides on the dimming beach of Dad’s bedside, once in the morning before work, once in the afternoon on my way home. Sometimes I talk to him; most of the time I don’t. I hold his thin hand with its rough nails, caress the back of it over and over, smoothing the thick red hair that springs back up. Sometimes I paint his cracked lips with Vaseline on a cotton swab. Sometimes I lay my head next to his red-haired hand on the bed and close my eyes.

The evening before Dad dies, Belli has the answer to the question in my eyes when I look at her.

“Not long.”

She folds the sheet back from Dad’s feet, presses on the bottom of his soles. “See?” They are bloodless, squishy. “The blood goes up there,” she points to his chest.

“Howard,” she says loudly, “Howard, your feet are cold!” She rubs them for several long minutes. Does touch bring you back to the living? Tether you there for however long you have left? Do you know when you are dying that you are dying?

Dad, can you hear us, feel us?

I go outside and call my husband, Ed. Who knows, people in comas sometimes hear things. Is ‘It won’t be long now’ the last thing you want to hear?

After dinner I come back and sit by Dad’s bedside until I can no longer stay awake. I tell him about the storm yesterday, the downed cottonwood trees taking out power for the entire neighborhood, the pile of wood chips the tree crew left in our side yard. His breathing is slow and steady. Somehow, I drive home, crawl into bed.

In the morning as I dress for work, Ed comes in. “The chip pile is smoking,” he says. We go outside together. The wood chips are spontaneously combusting. We grab rakes, pull the pile apart, find the hot spots. As soon as we begin to spray them down, Belli calls – Dad just died. Ten days after his stroke. Ten days of long hours at his side and he dies without any of us there.

“Goddamn it, Dad, that’s not funny,” I say. Ed looks at me with that she’s-finally-gone-crazy look. “He did that,” I say, pointing at the smoke, “he set it on fire.”

I yell over my shoulder as I run to my car. “Set a sprinkler. Call work. Tell them I won’t be there.” Dad is waxy white all over, already smelling faintly sweet.

“That wasn’t funny, Dad,” I say to him, holding his hand, rubbing his forearm, “That wasn’t funny.” I sit with him, rubbing, rubbing.

His eyes are wide open, staring. Last look or first look? Belli reaches around me and closes them.

“Can I be alone?” She nods, pats my arm, and leaves.

My fingers move by themselves. I rub and rub and rub. His hand is white and soft and his nails need cutting. I rub and rub and rub.

By touch, be known. By the thin, waxy skin. By the coarse, red hairs on the back of the hand, still springing up as I rub and rub and rub.

Half an hour later, the funeral-home director arrives, spreads a heavy black neoprene bag on a gurney next to Dad’s bed. As he opens its thick zipper the whole room sounds torn in half. On the count of three Belli and I help slide Dad’s body in. The director zips the bag shut, zips my dad away forever.

My father’s beautiful, terrible journey ends. Just like that, in a black neoprene bag.

Under an open, empty sky scoured by yesterday’s storm I stand in the driveway and watch the unmarked van drive away. Leaves tumble along the sidewalk and come to rest in shiny puddles.

The next morning, down at the beach, I sit on the log where Dad and I often sat and watch the sun rise. I hold my hand up to it and it fits into the bowl of my palm.

Someone else died yesterday. Someone was born. Just a breath between the two: one in, one out – the open-mouthed boundary between life and death.

And nothing makes any difference between the two. Not the bargaining, not the pleading, not our wishes, not our prayers. But I once read somewhere that the brain sedates the body as the body shuts down. I hope it’s true. I hope Dad traveled down that last unlit road peacefully, black trees sliding past, going home, wherever home might be.

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