Lessons from My Father - The New Yorker

"Don’t watch your father die. Then again, maybe you should. I don’t know. What do I know? I know that when they remove the tubes and machines that keep him alive they tell you that it could be hours or a day or minutes. They tell you he might gasp or choke, but he won’t feel pain, he won’t be aware. My father was surrounded by love, by our hands on him, our faces at his, our voices in his ear, hushed, trying. The sounds were brutal, uneven, as the last of his life left him. He was unnaturally gray, his whole body. His mouth was agape and no one knew what to do, so someone pulled the sheet over his face, then decided against it. I found the corner of the room and fell back against the wall. I wanted to put my fists through the wall, to shatter the dirty windows, to tell every man I saw he was a fucking loser because he was not my father and no one could be, no one comes close or ever will."


Lessons from My Father - The New Yorker: