déjà vu

...because, you see, it's about death again, but different this time. The theme remains, but the details are different. Ninety instead of nineteen. A hospice bed instead of a snowy tree. Family before instead of family after. A long lifetime versus a short one. Painful decline versus instantaneous extinguishment.

And this time, I don't know how I feel about it. Last time, at least the sentiment was clear, even if it wasn't easy. Now, I don't know. He was in pain, and he had made arrangements. He believed in Heaven. (He believes in Heaven?) There are so many things we still should have talked about. I know so little about so much of his life. But now, maybe our job is just to remember when we were there. As a little kid, I would help him put on his huge black shoes, fighting to wedge them on his feet with a shoehorn, and tying the laces of the monstrosity that seemed almost as big as I was. After a while, I got older and moodier, and it stopped being a game and became a chore, but by then, my sister was old enough to be enlisted. Then, for a while, when his eyesight started really going, he would ask me to read his prayer cards aloud, and I would sit by him while he said the rosary, counting Hail Mary's and Our Father's under his breath. I wondered, for a while, if this was his attempt to save me. Was he trying to make up for the loss of my good Catholic education - for the fact that my mother stopped taking us to church when I was five? I was a little offended, then, I think. I'm not now. I understand that whatever his intentions, their basis was always love.