When I last spoke with Dad, I asked him a litany of questions:
- How has this changed your ideas about your own death?
- How was Mom during the ambulance ride out to Federal Blvd?
- Who drove— you or B.?
- Did A. go with you two?
- Did you convoy by following the ambulance or drive separately?
- How old were Pop & Grandad Jackson when they died?
- When did you last visit Grandmother’s tombstone?
- Did you have an affair or infidelity?
- Were you aware of Hooks’ philandering as a teenager, once you were in Boulder, or later in adulthood?
- Where do you want your ashes spread?
I asked him all this because he said how he couldn’t provide the care on his own, so moving her to a hospice facility is a form of him getting support.
I ask these questions as some of them I’ve wondered about for more than a decade, some I’ve asked in the past and forgotten the answer, some I ask again because the answers now are different than they were in the past. I ask as a way of instilling in myself that Dad’s feelings and needs, ideas and memories change, too, to not take for granted what was an answer in April or in 2015 is still his answer now.
And, I ask to keep learning. To minimize my assumptions.
washing dishes: a father’s glimpses 