Long shot but do you have a minute?

by Kirsten Sandgren

My phone lit up beside me late last night, “long shot, but do you have a minute?” read the message from my childhood friend, Mel. With immediate uneasiness I set aside the article I had been reading and called. “You ok?” I ask. “I’m alright. I think I might go see my dad tomorrow, but I need to talk it over with someone.” Like me, Mel is the only child. Her mother passed away last year, leaving her father shattered by grief and drowning in debts about which he had no knowledge of until after his wife’s passing. His physical and emotional health has been tenuous at best since she died. She tells me about the last time she saw her dad, just a few days ago to drop off groceries. She wore a mask and gloves, leaving groceries on the front steps of her childhood home and then retreating several feet to allow her father to bring them into the house, reminding him several times as he moved towards her that the distance was necessary. After four weeks alone, with a handful of these visits as his only human contact, he struggled not to embrace his only child. Unbidden, my thoughts turn to the hospice medication kit that her family received when her mother was in her final days, “is it still in the house?” I ask Mel. “Yes” she replies. We’ve known each other for nearly 30 years, and we both know the answer to my next question but I ask it anyway, “Mel is he safe in that house alone?” An anguished pause, and then, “can I see him? What if I make him sick?”