I've realized that I'm obsessed with the idea of being there when my father dies. Obsessed to a point that's probably not very healthy but nonetheless, obsessed. So why am I not there now? Well...we'll get to that, I suppose.

You see, I wasn't there when my mother died. I was in New Jersey and she was in a hospital in D.C. I was on my way, sort of. I've probably mentioned this fact before but it is something that plagues me still, even though it was six years ago and there is absolutely no way to rectify the situation.

About a week before my mother died I returned to school in Vermont, at the urging of both of my parents. I had been in D.C throughout most of my winter break and they wanted me to return for the Spring semester. I wanted to go as well. It had been horrible watching my mother waste away and, no matter how many times I've said this, I'll say it again: I did not think that she was going to die. That idea just didn't seem possible.

So, I just went back to school. A week later, right as classes were beginning, my Dad called and said that she was going to die and that it could be anytime between right then and two weeks. He said that he and my mother wanted me to remain at school but that it was my choice. I decided to leave that afternoon to drive to D.C.

It was only a seven hour drive and one that I enjoyed. When I was eighteen, there was nothing I liked better in the world than being alone in my car (an old red Saab) with the highway stretched out for hours in front of me. However, on this particular trip, on a late afternoon in January, I was having trouble facing up to my decision. I was having trouble accepting the fact that I was driving towards my mother's death.

Around seven p.m. I made the fateful mistake that would haunt me for years to come. I stopped in New Jersey to see a boy that I thought I was in love with. It was one of those horrible, unrequited, I know you like me but I just love being friends wth you situations. I stopped there because I couldn't face continuing on and because I told myself that I was too upset to go on anyway. I planned to continue on after seeing the boy but my father let me off the hook by saying that I should stay the night if possible, that he didn't want me driving when I was upset.

At 3:30 in the morning, after too many glasses of vodka in this boy's uncle's kitchen, my Dad called to say that my mother had just passed away. I've heard it and repeated it so many times and it still doesn't make a diffference: my Dad claims that we wouldn't have gone to see her that night anyway, that I would have gotten in too late to go to the hospital. This fact just doesn't matter simply for the reason that I lied to myself when stopping in New Jersey.

So, needless to say, I want to be there when my father dies. I must be there. So far in my life, I have lost two grandparents, one aunt, one uncle, my mother and one of my best friends. Yet somehow, I have made it these twenty-five years without ever seeing a dead body. And somehow I have gotten it into my head that none of these deaths, the ones in the past and my father's impending, will make any sense until I see death in it's truest form. I just never saw my mother again. I just never saw my best friend again.

The last times that I saw both of them, they were still living, albeit in horrific conditions, but nonetheless, they were alive. And then suddenly I was just being told that they were gone. To me, it's almost as though they could still be out there somewhere, living in a different country or in a cliff-top house in Welfleet. I feel like I really need to look down upon the body of a man I have know my whole life and truly understand that he is not here anymore. Is this wrong?
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