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“No judgment,” I say, though all I’ve done lately is judge.

Kyle and I may not be “meant to be,” whatever that even means, but he’s not an awful human being. I, on the other hand, may be.

I pack a suitcase while Kyle keeps watching TV. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone, so I pack about half my entire closet. It is surreal to think that when I return, when I unpack this suitcase, my dad will be dead.

By the time I get in bed, Kyle is already asleep, snoring away. I gently push on his back so he rolls on his side. I text Elijah:

My dad is going downhill. I’m flying up tomorrow

He responds immediately because his generation is never without their phones. I am old enough to wrestle with such an attachment.

I’m so sorry. How can I be there for you? Can I send food to your mom’s place?

My mom’s place. I haven’t told him that my mom died, that I have a stepmom. There is so much he doesn’t know.

That’s sweet. Let me get up there and see what’s going on first

There are three dots for a while, and I wonder what paragraph-length text he’s composing. The dots go away and then reappear momentarily before his words appear:

I think I love you

There it is. The words I have both longed and feared to hear. My body thrums with ecstatic energy. If I listen to my body, his love for me is a good thing. My head tells me it’s all much more complicated.

He adds more:

Sorry. It’s not the right time to say that. I just felt ... verklempt.

I smile.

Verklempt? Nice word choice.

Him: Yes. Verklempt. I do love you though. And I want to be there for you however I can

I respond with something thrilling, words that put me at the top of a roller coaster, soaring down through the breeze, not knowing if I’ll crash into the ground or rise up into the sky again:

I think I love you too

When I see my dad, I sigh with relief. Things are not as dire as I’d envisioned. He is still here, still him. I lie next to him in bed, take comfort in his warmth. His eyes remain closed, but his lips turn upward in a small smile. Merry says he doesn’t open his eyes much anymore.

He is more contracted than he was just a few days ago, curled into himself, almost into a fetal position. I play the role of big spoon, my body wrapped around his. It is a role I never thought I’d play.

He is so, so thin. It’s no wonder they call it a wasting disease. I stare at his legs, mere sticks now. With all the surrounding flesh gone, the bones are all that remain, smaller than I ever thought possible. I place my palm on his femur, marveling. Where did his flesh go ?

His breathing is fast and shallow. There is an oxygen machine now, emitting rhythmic whooshing sounds.

Merry says his heart rate has been increasing, which the hospice nurse said happens near the end.

His heart is literally racing to get enough blood to his vital organs.

The body is programmed for survival. It will make all kinds of adjustments to carry on.

Frank comes to the house with jars of baby food, several varieties of Gerber.

My dad is subsisting on food my daughters are too old to eat.

I trade spots with Merry, watch as she attempts to spoon-feed my dad, deliver minuscule portions into the small opening he is able to make with the slight parting of his lips. It is excruciating to witness.

“I’ll be right back,” I say, finding it impossible to stay.

There’s a knock at the front door, and I answer it. A thirtysomething woman in navy blue scrubs is standing there with an overstuffed bag over one shoulder and a clipboard in her hands. She frees up one hand and sticks it out to me.

“Hi,” she says. “I’m Becky, the hospice nurse.”

“Oh, hi,” I say.

“Are you Rob’s daughter?”

I like that she refers to him by name, that she knows his name without consulting her clipboard.

“I am. Nicole.”

I open the door to give her a wider berth, and she comes in. She is bouncy and energetic, and I want her cheerfulness to be contagious. I follow her to my dad’s room, where Merry is still spoon-feeding him.

“Hi, Meredith,” Becky says. She is good with names. I wonder how many visits she has per day with the dying and their agonized families. I wonder how she remains so perky.

“I know you said to consider not feeding him,” Merry says to Becky, guilt all over her face. “I just ... can’t.”

Becky gives her a thin smile and puts a hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay. These last days are as much about your comfort as they are about his.”

“Wait, why should we stop feeding him?” I ask. Merry hasn’t told me this.

Becky goes to my dad, places a thermometer in his mouth.

“Well, there’s the risk of aspiration pneumonia because he’s having trouble swallowing,” she says. “But at this stage, it is what it is.”

She pries open my dad’s eyes, points a little flashlight into them.

“His eyes are fixed and not responding to light.”

“What does that mean?” I ask.

“He’s likely going blind.”

Merry’s face falls, and she starts to cry, her shoulders heaving. I go to her, hold her, let her put her weight into me.

“Can he hear us?” I ask.

“Yes,” Becky says without hesitation. “Hearing is the first sense we gain in the womb and the last we lose.”

If he can hear us, does he comprehend that he’s dying? He appears so calm. I like to think he does comprehend and that he has come to acceptance and peace. It is the rest of us who suffer.

“I can’t be here,” Merry says before leaving the room.

I follow her to the kitchen. She falls to her knees, hanging on to the edge of the granite counter. She weeps. I crouch next to her, my own tears coming.

“I don’t know who I’ll be without him,” she says.

He has been the sun she’s revolved around all these years. Movies glamorize this as the ultimate form of love, something to aspire to. I see the dark side.

“You don’t have to know that right now,” I tell her.

We stay like that on the floor until Becky comes into the kitchen and says, “Okay, all set. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

I stand. “Is there anything we should be doing for him?”

“You’re doing it,” she says brightly. “Just be with him. He knows you’re here. He can hear you. Talk to him.”

As soon as she leaves, I heed her advice. I go to my dad. Frank has elevated the back of the bed so he’s sitting up.

“I was going to bring him into the other room for dinner,” Frank says. “Merry likes that.”

He’s wheeled over the Hoyer lift, a manual hydraulic lift that looks like a giant version of that arcade game where you maneuver a claw to grasp a toy.

With the Hoyer lift, the “claw” connects to a sling that’s placed under my dad’s body.

With a push of a button, he can be lifted out of bed and placed in his wheelchair.

“Can I just have a minute with him?” I ask.

Frank says, “Absolutely!” and quickly makes himself scarce.

I sit next to my dad, his eyes still closed. He is wearing his navy blue Wave Rider T-shirt, a favorite, cut up the back like all his shirts now.

My face is inches from his. I see up close the definition of his cheekbones.

“You look like a runway model,” I tell him.

We’ve always preferred levity in times of crisis.

“Daddy,” I say, leaning in close to his ear, my lips already quivering. “You’ve been such a good dad. You know that, right? I love you so much.”

His lips part as if he may want to say something back, his usual “Love ya,” perhaps.

But no sound comes. I stare at his mouth, which is slightly agape, notice that his bottom front teeth are chipped, something I’d never noticed before.

He’s always been a chronic nail-biter. When I was a teenager, he let me paint his nails pink in an attempt to help him quit.

“I hope it doesn’t hurt you when they use this lift thing,” I say. “I’m sure you just want to rest in bed.”

He gives a barely perceptible shake of his head, as if rejecting the notion that he is at all bothered by the lift or anything else that’s happening to him. He’s never been one to admit struggle.

When Frank returns, I help him slide the sling under my dad’s body—no easy feat.

When he’s securely latched to the lift, I watch as Frank operates the machine, my dad’s body slowly levitating off the bed, his knees pulled into his chest. Suspended in the air, he looks like a baby in a blanket held in the stork’s beak.

He looks as if he is about to be delivered, and maybe he is. Maybe that’s what death is—a delivery.

I admit it is nice to have him at the dinner table, even if he sits in silence. I remember what the hospice nurse said about him being able to hear.

“You know what one of my favorite dad memories is?” I say to Merry.

She has made us plates of chicken and rice, but she is just pushing her food around her plate with her fork, creating labyrinths through the rice.

“Hmm?” she asks, not looking up.

“Remember when he was in his running phase?” I ask.

It was when I was eleven or twelve, that awkward transition between child and teenager, between thinking your parents are cool and thinking they are absolutely mortifying.

My dad had become something of a runner, signing up for local 5Ks.

I vacillated between standing on the sidelines, cheering him on, and staying as far away from the races as possible, worried someone from school would see me with him while he was wearing his dorky sweatband and matching athletic socks.

“I do remember,” Merry says with a wistful smile. “He was in the best shape of his life then.”