And then I understood something I couldn’t have understood at nineteen.
My father had been frightened for me in exactly the same way my grandfather had been frightened for my mother.
He made the wrong call because he thought he was protecting my future.
Jeffrey made the wrong call for exactly the same reason.
And so did I, sitting on my bedroom floor in 1985, tearing up four and a half pages because I’d decided that my feelings would be a burden to somebody I loved.
We All Chose Silence
Every one of us. My father. Jeffrey. Me.
And every one of us thought silence was the kind thing. The generous thing. The mature thing.
It wasn’t.
It was just the thing that let us avoid a hard conversation, and we dressed it up in the language of protecting each other.
Forty-one years is what that cost.
He Came Home Two Days Later
Peter arranged for hospice care at his house outside Harrisburg. There’s a room on the first floor with a window that gets afternoon sun.
