Encounters at Death’s Door

January 13, 2013

I entered the room of a dying woman, my father’s widow, living her final days under hospice care. Her eyes searched through the dim light, settling on my face for a moment then fixing on something, what I couldn’t tell. The proverbial distant shore drawing closer? Or the landscape of a drug-induced waking dream? After leaving, I ate lunch nearby on a restaurant patio with my two grown children. Across the parking lot a tall man walked toward a car. The wind caught his white hair. I’ve never seen anyone so closely resembling my father in his old age. He drove away in the direction from which I came.

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