When you read to your father from one of his westerns, leave the cowboys galloping across the page to look up and see his crepe-like paw reaching for the book. Hand it to him slowly, as if the very act of giving him the book were a timid question. Once it is in his grasp, his arm and hand fall heavily on the bed; his fingers flutter on the cover and brush away the crumbs of your attempt at diversion.

If you can, try not to be angry. Try to be the person your husband thinks you are, the one who makes his temples blanch with astonishment at what he calls your “natural ability” to care so completely, so selflessly, for your son. In your head, tell your husband again that “natural ability” is only one evolutionary step away from “instinct.” And that both stink like excuses.

Mostly, try not to count the slender spines of mustard brown paperbacks lining your father’s bookshelf. Do not think of those eighty-three tattered westerns as empirical evidence that he does enjoy the stories you find so silly, but for some reason, today, he does not feel up to meeting the sunburned cowboy and his faithful horse on the unsettled plain. Whatever you do, do not take his fatigue personally.

Attempt to break your father into a million pieces with the power of your stare. It does not work. Instead, you hear his younger voice murmuring in a dark corner of your brain: “You always exaggerate.” It is too late when it occurs to you that “always” is an exaggeration, too.

Smooth your forehead. Ponder giving up a little. But don’t.

Have cable installed knowing he will flinch at the expense.

Be nice to the hospice nurse even when the questions she asks all seem to be typed in black and white, in a good, roman font, followed by blank lines and tiny boxes that you must fill. Be persistent even though she responds to any probing you make into her personal life by silently fidgeting with the tubes and medication bottles.

She always puts the pills in a tiny paper cup. You never do this.

She even tightens the sheets around his feet that you loosened minutes earlier.

You want to say to her, “It is so quiet here,” but that is not what you really mean.

Think about empty, typeset boxes and wish for blank, new beginnings.

Hate the thought of new beginnings, packed so with desperation.

You know that they have become annoyed by your phone calls because they put you on hold often. Mash the speaker phone button and let the dinky Muzak push in on the quiet. Go about your business. When they finally pick up, almost trip on the wires trying to get to the receiver, knowing from experience that they won’t say hello twice before they disconnect.

Explain that the new medication is causing incontinence. Marvel at your use of the word: “incontinence.” Marvel at its cleanliness and glide on its evasiveness. Think of rubber soles on an ice pond.

Take longer and longer to wash you hands. Worry that you are becoming obsessive when you use disinfectant wipes on every light switch and doorknob.

Let the night sneak up on you. Lose track of time thinking about your son’s ears. Those pink, gently curving ears. A kind man’s ears are how you like to think of them. They are a bit too large, it is true, and when his hair is not trimmed, it pokes out in tufts just over the top of them, reminding you of weeds along the edge of a sidewalk. But the girls like him; you know this because the phone rings nonstop and every now and then one of them will beep her horn as she passes by the house. Know that even the girls who do not have crushes on him now will remember him well into middle age. He is the boy girls tell their secrets to.

Tell yourself, “I can do this, I can do this, I can do this.”

Pretend not to notice or care that your father seems not to notice or care about the cable. You think that if he could, he would say, “I don’t give a hoot what you do.” Or “a rat’s ass.” Settle on “a hoot” and smile while you wash the dishes. Lift your limp hand in and out of the bubbles and watch the pearly orbs slide to the end of your fingertips.

Turn on the TV, but watch him. When staring at him for so long makes your face hot, pick up a handful of his westerns and carry them to the next room. Flip through them at random, read sporadically, and find yourself searching for women’s names. Polly…Josie…Annie, they all say things like, “Get on out of here and don’t come back ’til you clean yourself up a bit,” and “I’ve seen the likes of you and I ain’t a bit surprised,” and “What would Pa say?”

One morning someone will bang gruffly on the storm door. Glance at your watch, try to remember the day of the week, but realize it can’t be the nurse this early, and open the door anyway. Take a breath or two before you recognize Mr. Carlisle. After he asks about your father, tell him the state of things. Watch him nod and listen to him say “yes, yes,” that he’s seen you coming and going, that he’d thought it was you, that Sharon would have been ashamed of his neglecting you, and that if she were still with him she’d see to it that you were well fed every night. At the mention of his deceased wife, suddenly remember a browner, plumper Mr. Carlisle playfully flirting with your mother at the mailbox, over the hedge. Be glad that your father was the type of man who enjoyed watching other men kindly flirt with his wife.

Invite Mr. Carlisle in and show him to your father’s room, overcome with hospice equipment and your own disheveled cot. Be aware that the room smells like a sick room, and wonder what it is like to see a friend dying. Leave the two crumpled and throaty men together and make plans in your head to ask Mr. Carlisle for dinner. Linger outside the bedroom door. Listen to Mr. Carlisle’s muffled deep voice. Want him to stay and stay and stay.

Your father does not like it when you wipe down his face, but mostly he gives in to it and only puckers his lips a little at the cool cloth.

His eyes leak and ooze, leave rivulets of dusty – what is it? What is the word for it? The nurse must know the one, definitive word for the yellow-white, dry residue left behind when moisture from his eyes dribbles down his cheeks and evaporates among the craggy wrinkles. What do you call what is left behind? Put this question at the bottom of the list of questions you have for her on dosages and symptoms and signs. Know that you will never reach the bottom of the list.

Set aside one day in which you will not make yourself sit with him. Resolve not to feel guilty about it. On that day, dispense the pills with a precision and alacrity that would make Nurse proud, even if you don’t use the little cups. Spend your day in the rest of the house. But listen closely.

When Nurse uses the phone to confirm the order to “up the meds,” don’t turn away from the needle.

Your son wants to know when you are coming home. He wants to know if he has to come there, and he asks you a lot of jolting, unanswerable questions about your father.

Your husband says, “Don’t be a martyr.” Tell him there is no other place you’d rather be, that it will be over soon. It is not a lie, but he is not convinced.

Try to read your father’s glances.

Know that he does not know where he is.

Admit that the cartoon channel honking great blasts of color across the room does not help, even if the volume is muted.

When the heat index passes one hundred degrees in the third week, walk through the rooms talking nonstop. Don’t even notice that your voice is hoarse and that what reels from your mouth often lacks logical connections. Work, friends, neighbors – nothing he cares about or has even heard about before.

Forget some things and remember others. Spend the better part of an afternoon trying to calculate the year he graduated high school. Think you have it until you see your mother’s sister talking about the year he was held back. Remember a sneer crouching in the corner of her mouth.

Ask him about it while you are giving him the night bath, but be glad that he does not hear you.

The smell makes you gag, but there is nothing you can do until Nurse gets there to help change the sheets. You cannot move him by yourself.

“It’s no big deal, no big deal, no big deal.”

Find a picture of your mother when she was about your age. Prop it in front of the clock radio so that he can see her. It glows warm and umber from the lit display, and the blinking colon between the numbers makes your mother’s image throb.

Each morning wake wondering if this will be the day. Look for it in his eyes, which tell you nothing.

You are angry often and think about smashing the dishes just to hear the glass crack and splinter. Refrain from it with all your might.

Think: It is too late to rebel.

Hear the voice of the counselor you saw twice at the free, women’s clinic in your twenties: “You are an adult now. You determine your priorities.”

Talk to your husband for nearly an hour about why you did not think of the picture earlier. When he tells you to get out of the house, close your eyes. When he asks if he should start looking for plane tickets, say nothing.

Miss his smell and the veins along his forearm.

Wonder if a dying man wants more than to die.

Think about your father’s regrets. Do not think about yours. Think about your son instead.

You feel sure that the heat will break the day before he dies. You will open his windows just enough to circulate the air and then you will leave the house to buy groceries for your family, who will be arriving that night. You will linger over the flowers at the grocery store and wonder if your father would like to see them.

Faced with your family’s impending presence in the house, mixed feelings will course through you. You will have to share your father, though it seems ridiculous to you that this should matter. He will continue to veer in and out of consciousness, and you will be left wondering how to help your son deal with disappointment over the things he will never know about his grandfather. Soon, there will be only guessing.

Remember the drizzly morning your son was born. After the delivery, your father came into the room, bent like a shy, old man, rain in his hair. You held your son protectively and nuzzled his ear. And then, because you could tell your father was blank with awe, you began by lifting the tiny new fingers for him to see and you said, “Hello, Dad.”