You’ll remember later, it was the mention of the kitten food that did you in; that made the floodgate of tears start flowing, that made you start sobbing. You’ll think of this a month later when you get the call from the unknown number, you’ll cry in much the same way even before picking up the phone.

Months earlier, you’re getting into Miami: your flight got in just before midnight, and you groggily caught a cab to the Airbnb, a self-entry hotel with no front desk. As the cab had pulled away, you realized in horror that you had left your phone in the cab. You went into a kind of paralyzed shock as you kept pawing your pants pocket where your phone should be, start panic-sweating in the humid, warm Miami night. You frantically got your work phone out to try to log into your email or Instagram to contact Christina, your assistant for the trip, but in your panic couldn’t recall any passwords. You took a deep breath. Just get into the room, put your bags down, you reasoned. Then solve it from there. You started calling your personal phone with your work phone, praying that the cabbie would hear it and answer. No answer, of course.

Then an epiphany! I have my ipad, I can access my door code from there for my room! You get your iPad out, hastily check your email. There’s the code. You also start pinging your iphone from your tablet, another layer of noise to hopefully attract the cabbie’s attention to your phone in his backseat.

You’re putting the code in to your hotel door when the door opens from the other side! The woman is understandably guarded but warms quickly when she sees the email with the code: the site double booked the room. You finally get ahold of the cabbie, who returns with your phone, and relays a miracle. Your phone wasn’t in the cab, it was left on the roof of the cab and stayed there the entire trip to the cabbie’s house.

Luckily the rest of the trip to Miami is uneventful and you make it back to the frigid Portland winter. You settle into your usual routine: day job on most days, and making art on your days off. You’re busy making your installations but it’s harder in the winter cold, your hands freeze up since you need them gloveless to manipulate your materials. You power through anyway, since making art is your happy place. You decide to go to Zona Maco, a follow-up trip after Art Basel, to make a few installations in Mexico City, you book the tickets, reserve the Airbnb. You decide to brush up on your broken Spanish and commit to a 60-day streak on Duolingo. The owl mascot immediately starts harassing you to practice constantly.

You notice absently that Ned is getting thin, maybe a bit too thin. You know he’s getting old, and older cats just get thin sometimes, but something seems…off. You make the appointment for the vet. In the meantime, your neighbors Jane and Michael are still happy to take care of him and pamper him while you travel again to Albuquerque to see your Dad.

This is the second time you’ve traveled to him while he’s been in hospice, after the devastating fall a couple months before. The house seems even emptier, even quieter than the month before. The makeshift desk is still there where the piano used to be, in the middle of the living room. A few pieces of the wall art are now taken off the walls, set on the ground. There are green dots scattered around on objects that you and the other sibs are taking. You can’t help but anthropomorphize the objects, theorize that maybe the things that aren’t being claimed are sad that they’re being rejected. You open the fridge. Still the same: empty except for cheese and his butterscotch pudding cups.

On the way to the care facility you space out at an intersection, the pickup truck behind you honks impatiently, maybe a second or two too long to be considered a polite tap. You put your dad’s old Jeep Cherokee into park, reach under the seat, pull out the tire iron. You open the door and swing your legs out onto the gray Albuquerque asphalt, walk briskly to the truck behind you, and calmly smash its front headlight with the tire iron. You then do the other light, as the truck driver looks on, aghast. Deadpan, you proceed to circle to the back and smash the taillights, then walk silently up to the driver side window where you raise the tire iron and

The truck behind you honks impatiently, you look up and it’s a green arrow. You tap the gas and make it through the intersection, and the truck revs its motor huffily and passes you once through. You consider ordering a custom t-shirt that says “BE NICE TO ME EVERYONE, MY DAD IS DYING”.

You make it to the facility, go inside. You step nimbly out of the way as the same woman with the crazy-fast motorized wheelchair races by again, same as last month, burning rubber down the hall. You peek in to your dad’s room, he is asleep. As is the routine, you sit in the chair next to him, hold his hand with the paper-thin skin. His arms are covered with bruises and blood blisters from simply existing. He has been self conscious of them in the past, worn concealer to make them less noticeable, but has cared less and less now that he was in hospice.

He eventually wakes up, and smiles a huge, childlike smile when he realizes you’re in the room with him. Then he frowns: “Why didn’t you wake me up? How long have you been here?” He always says this each day that you visit.

“You need your sleep dad. It’ll help you heal up.”

You both fall silent, because you both know he isn’t leaving here. He is not getting better. You shift into telling him about your life, your art. He asks how Ned is doing. “He’s great!” you lie. There’s no point in telling him the truth, that you’re very worried about your cat, that you think this might be it for him. These, these little lies we tell the dying, these are important. This is the world they are leaving and we want them to know it is perfect, there is nothing wrong, we are not stressed about our jobs, we are not lonely. We want the dying to know that we will be fine with them eventually. We want them to know there is an abundance of love in this world.

And my dad deserves that, he deserves to know that my life is amazing and going wonderfully, as I reassured him it was. He was so proud of my recent art career. He was stoic but so incredibly funny. He was gentle, and a class act. He was honest. We made small talk, then he asked, a bit embarrassed, if I would help brush his teeth. Yes, the hospice nurses would do this, but with a manual toothbrush, and he missed how clean his teeth would get with the electric brush. I got the brush, helped hold the brush, held the spit-cup under his chin. I was startled when he reached into his mouth after the brushing was done and took his partials out which I had forgotten he had. I took them to the sink and carefully, lovingly brushed them with the electric toothbrush too. I pat them dry, bring them back.

“Oh my God, that’s so much better.” he sighs after he puts them back in.

We have our usual routine of watching Wheel of Fortune, watching Jeopardy. As always, he’s sharp enough to get many of the answers right, often before me, but his voice is quieter, is thin and raspy at the edges. You squeeze his hand goodbye as you leave for the night, promise to return the next month. Unlike last trip, there are no tears. You just smile at each other.

That night, you’re looking at the papers on the desk when you find a folder that was pulled out of the file cabinet, presumably by Jeanne. It’s simply labeled “Michael”. You are not prepared for what you find when you open it, and tears quietly roll down your face as you find old newspaper clippings from plays you were in, a magazine article about Box Wine Boyfriend, photos from your set designs at Sacred Fools theater in LA.

The next morning you tuck it safely into your luggage. You take a good, long look at the house he lived in for the past 20 years: it will never look like this again. Soon, the walls will be painted, the carpet replaced, a facelift to make it more marketable for the estate agents. You pass through one room at a time, turning the lights off as if a movie set is being shuttered; behind you the workers start deconstructing the walls, rolling up the floors, packing up the props, this location won’t be used anymore. The last light turns off, the garage door slowly rumbles shut behind you as your Uber pulls up.

Back in Portland, you have one hand on Ned’s back as he purrs on the vet table, blissfully unaware. You channel your dad’s stoicism as the vet describes the tumor in Ned’s stomach, as he discusses the medications to help make him more comfortable over the next month or two, how the weight loss will become more pronounced and severe. It’s not until you go to the front desk to get handed his prescription food that you lose it: the vet techs know Ned so well, have over the past 8 or so years that you’ve lived nearby, and they’re decided to throw in a few cans of kitten food as a treat for him in his last days. You proceed to lose your shit.

You stand there sobbing, Ned looks at you confused from his carrier. A small regret is that you never knew Ned as a kitten, you always wish you had. A woman on the other side of the vet waiting room peruses the food, her back to you. Without turning around, she says softly, “I’m so sorry for what you’re going through. I’ve been there.”

“Thank you'” you manage to quietly mutter as a notification pops up on your phone. NOT NOW DUOLINGO OWL I HAVE TO PUT MY CAT TO SLEEP.

About a month later, your hand is once again on Ned, he’s in your lap as you get ready to head to a manager meeting at work. He is still purring, he still doesn’t appear to be in any pain, but you can only gently pet his side. He is dangerously thin, and petting his back, his bony spine, only reminds you of his inevitable end. It’s a calm, quiet Sunday morning and the promise of spring is right around the corner.

The phone rings from an unknown number, a 505 area code, and you already know what it means. It goes to voicemail. You cry for a bit, then call it back. You listen, you speak, you ask a question or two, you hang up. You cry some more, your text your boss to let her know you won’t make the meeting. After a bit, you finish writing this piece.

Ned nuzzles you, comforts you. Maybe this is his last gift to you after almost 13 years of being with you for everything, after such hardships and joys you’ve been through. Having the privilege of being your father’s son was such a gift, too, how lucky and special we all are to be loved by someone. How rare and bizarre and unique it is to love others. How strange it is for someone to persist only in our memories after leaving such a huge impression in our lives, to take up so much square footage in our minds and in our hearts. How lucky I feel to grieve so deeply for a man who shaped so much of who I am and what my values are.

Grief is the proof that love once existed, and that love continues to exist.