The Boat Over: Remembering My Father's Final Days
Morning. A fresh start. I’m on the way to my father’s house in Edgartown. My father has died. The day begins as any other in which I’d board the Island Home ferry. It’s the same, but it’s not the same. It will never be the same again: You won’t be there to greet me at the dock on the other side, or will you? Trust me, I will be looking.
Plowing up the steel ramp’s slow and twisting incline, holding onto the cold steel rail with my right hand, steadying myself against the wind blowing across the harbor, the pier, wind that would force me backward in time and downward on the plank. The waves slap, slap, slapping against the ferry’s flanks, bring him back; bring him back, crashing angrily back with white-crested peaks.
Thoughts like words flowing without edit, eddying around me. Memories return to me in waves as I cross the threshold into the steamship, a vessel of passage from Woods Hole to Vineyard Haven. On a voyage to my father’s Martha’s Vineyard home, I reflect, drenched in a sea of memories. How did a reliable man, with such a stubborn tenacity to live, reach a sudden end? I want to remember.
***
False teeth. I trace it as far back as his new false teeth in 2007. When Wes and I were married in October 2012, my father smiled a radiant Hollywood smile, but every time I saw his smile, I thought, ‘Damn dentures!’ Those were the dentures that never fit right, that corrected a lifelong underbite with a painful perfect alignment.
Soon after those damn dentures, my dad limited his diet to soft food like cottage cheese, oatmeal, and yogurt. I offered countless times to talk to his dentist and advocate for his dentures to be redone, but he refused, not wanting to be a burden to even his dentist. Initially his weight loss was gradual. A skipped Boost protein drink here, a missing Ensure drink there.
Eventually when we enjoyed breakfast at the airport’s PlaneView Restaurant, my dad would joke about how he was free to order a chocolate shake along with his hearty breakfast of scrambled eggs and sausage, proudly announcing that he was under doctor’s orders to gain weight. It would’ve been almost funny if it weren’t so ominous. By December 2017, my father had lost a total of more than fifty pounds in six months. He was then malnourished. Failure to thrive.
***
On board, those thin purple and blue patterned threadbare ferry seats, flanked by steel cup holders sturdy as soldiers, and surrounded by windows. As reliable and steadfast as my father himself. I select a seat close to the exit, settling in for the ride...
***
Falling: the beginning of the end. I first noticed my dad’s health beginning to decline in February 2017, when I learned he was rushing around one morning on his way to physical therapy at Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, and he tripped in the living room and did a formidable face plant right on his own father’s platform rocker. Not realizing he might be hurt, and being the stoic good sport he always was, he drove to his appointment himself. At the hospital he informed the physical therapist that his neck was “kinda sore,” and she advised him to bring himself to the emergency room to have his neck examined. I can only imagine what his response might’ve been, perhaps an expletive might’ve been involved, but I know he complied because I received a phone call from him later on that day, and, when I asked how he was doing, instead of his customary ‘fair-to-middling,’ he replied, “Oh, terrible. I’m in the hospital with a broken neck.” My dad did not mince words.
***
Bring him back; bring him back. Now the dock releases the ferry, now the ferry advances, departing Woods Hole, thrusts forward, now the vessel is turning, turning. Always a BMW with a sensitive car alarm, piercing the silent steady flow of thought, sounds on the lower cargo deck, while we pass Cuttyhunk, the Elizabeth Islands. The water glistens with fragments of old sunshine reflected on its choppy surface. Already the island is in sight across the Vineyard Sound. If only my memories were as clear as the day’s line of sight across the Sound, but the waters of the past remain murky.
***
While preparing to make the trip from my house in West Yarmouth to Oak Bluffs to address his broken neck, I had received a phone call from Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, “Your dad is being taken by ambulance to Mass General, and he wanted me to let you know.” My dad ended up wearing a monstrous hard plastic neck brace with metal bars from chin to chest for six months.
Once back at home, my dad tried many death-defying acts such as tilting his torso backwards to swig his favorite Schweppes ginger ale directly from the bottle, almost losing his balance in the process. He was given all manner of in-home support—visiting nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists, and home health aides to help him heal. But I swear it was his sheer stubbornness that ultimately proved the deciding factor in how he would do. He simply refused to give up.
Lymphedema, leaking water. When I visited him on the island after his discharge from Mass General, I noticed how swollen his hands and legs had grown. He had a terrible case of lymphedema, which basically meant lymph fluid would pool up in his extremities, causing him to appear bloated and making the task of putting on socks and shoes extremely difficult. I noticed then he had significant trouble getting dressed. In fact, it took him a good hour and a half to get ready to go anywhere. Then one day my dad called me to ask, “How do I stop leaking water?” Naturally, I asked him to clarify. “I’m not bleeding; I’m leaking water, and I can’t get it to stop.” “Call your doctor,” I advised him. This would be the first of many times he refused to call a doctor.
***
Falling, my dad pointed out to me, was a Whoolery trait. “You fell off the window ledge of your Somerville studio; your mother fell down the Sudbury stairs; your daughter slid down the Vineyard stairs,” he opined. But no one fell as many times, or as successfully, as my dad, each time landing face first. Among his personal effects was his last birthday card to his granddaughter in which he scrawled these final parting words of advice: ‘Don’t fall!’
***
Pneumothorax, A-Fib, Congestive Heart Failure, Colonoscopy. In the spring and summer months, my father took two trips by bus to Boston’s Mass General wearing his neck brace and struggling to get out of his bus seat as well as on and off the bus. At Mass General the doctors discovered a pneumothorax, an air bubble escaped from his lungs into his chest cavity. They also identified that he was in A-fib and was suffering from congestive heart failure. But it was his doctor at Martha’s Vineyard Hospital who suspected “something malignant” was going on with his colon. She scheduled my father for a colonoscopy in October 2017. I accompanied him to his colonoscopy, and all his results pointed to a normal colon; however, the required fasting had weakened him significantly, and he would later question whether his decision to proceed with the colonoscopy had not hastened his declining health.
***
At the end of August 2017, my dad fell twice in one week. The first time I found him lying with his head caught in a wooden chair in his bedroom, wedged between the caned seat and the middle rung. He was bleeding from his head, requiring a trip to the emergency room and seven staples in his skull. The second time he fell scared me even more, for I found him lying face down on the cement floor of the shed. “Well, don’t just stand there, help me up,” he demanded. I trembled as I tried hoisting him by his thin, bony arm, imagining this was how it might end, during an effort to retrieve his dolly from the shed in order to load his trash into the back of his Honda Element en route to the dump. And, yes, he did have a Lifeline medical alert necklace. And, no, he wasn’t wearing it. I called 9-1-1 myself, and it took three EMTs to pick him up off the shed floor, requiring yet another trip to the emergency room and stitches to his left arm. At the ER, a social worker made my dad promise that, if she discharged him, he would wear his Lifeline at home. He agreed.
***
In an effort to make the holiday easier for my dad, I decided that my husband Wes, my daughter Melissa, and I would spend Thanksgiving 2017 on Martha’s Vineyard in my father’s home. We ordered a precooked turkey and extravagant side dishes from Morning Glory Farms and the Scottish Bakehouse. I fully expected to bring Thanksgiving to him, not realizing that my father would go to great lengths to set an elaborate dining room table with doilies, silverware, and fancy china from Thanksgivings and dinner parties past.
It was a wonderful, memorable meal, our last full supper together, however that evening, my father relinquished his bedroom to me and Melissa, opting to sleep on the living room couch. At three in the morning, I awoke to the shrill beeping of a large ambulance backing into the driveway, accompanied by flashing lights. Soon my dad’s home was abuzz with about seven responding EMTs from Edgartown Fire. My father had rolled off the sofa at midnight, had lain there for three hours, then quietly called 9-1-1 from his cell phone on the floor. His logic, although tragically flawed, was deeply touching: “I didn’t want to wake you and Melissa up.”
Pneumonia. After we returned home from the island the very next day, my father fell three times on November 26; once in the bedroom, once in the bathroom; and once off the couch in the living room again. These three falls, on November 26 alone, resulted in his hospitalization for pneumonia at Martha’s Vineyard Hospital. Put in perspective, my father had transitioned from falling two times in one week in August to falling three times a day in November.
***
The gentle swaying motion of the ferry lulls me into the next fleeting memory: The Hardest Thing I Have Ever Had to Say and Do….
December 14, 2017 should have been my father’s follow up exam with his primary care doctor, so once again I was riding the ferry on December 13 in readiness, when I received a phone call from his visiting nurse regarding a pill mix up in his pill box and a rattle in his chest that might be suspected pneumonia again. Christina had discovered that my dad had lost more weight; he was down to 124.8 pounds from 128 pounds the previous week. She informed me that my dad could no longer live at home, and she recommended that I bring him to the emergency room as soon as possible. For the remainder of my ferry ride over, I had contemplated the gravity of the situation. Wouldn’t it be better if my dad had round-the-clock care closer to me? I had tried in September to convince him to sell his home and move into an assisted living facility in Falmouth called Atria at Woodbriar. I had even booked a tour for the two of us, but at the last minute, my dad had become belligerent and refused to even tour the facility.
But by December 2017, assisted living was no longer a viable option for my father who was too much of a fall risk and forgot to eat regular meals. Aside from breakfast, my dad was no longer interested in eating. He looked frail and gaunt with a grey pallor and skin that bruised a deep purple with each fall like an overripe human peach. It was called “failure to thrive,” the visiting nurse explained to me, and it was slowly killing him.
When I arrived at my dad’s home that time, it was with the knowledge that this would be the last time he would be at home. I was overcome with emotion. He was as ready for me as I’d ever seen him, his duffel bag stuffed with clean tee-shirts, zip-up fleece jackets, chino pants, two shoe horns, his cell phone charger and his entire collection of cashmere scarves. As he headed toward the kitchen door, I grabbed his electric razor and its power cord from his bathroom, while he checked his wallet. “I’ll drive,” I called after him as he wobbled his way toward the Element, “I’ll letch’ya,” my dad chimed in good naturedly, adjusting the passenger seat as far back as it would recline and lifting each leg in with his swollen hands, one at a time.
But at first he did not seem to fully grasp the momentousness of the occasion.
“I’m so mad at myself,” my dad began. “I forgot to buy eggs at the grocery store yesterday, so I didn’t have a good breakfast this morning.” Silence. Then, “Could you stop at the bank then Stop & Shop before we go?”
Silence. “Dad, you probably have pneumonia again, so we have to go directly to the hospital…Dad, this is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to say: I don’t think we are ever coming back.”
He asked me to repeat myself because I was crying so hard I could barely breathe.
I felt like a kidnapper. “I’m so sorry dad. You can’t live alone anymore, it’s not safe, and I don’t know what else to do...”
“I guess you’re right; you’re doing the right thing,” he acknowledged.
In the past, every time he was in the hospital my dad made me an unwitting accomplice to his schemes to escape. (“Hand me my walker damn-it!” he would demand, ignoring the chair alarms.)
Except this time.
This time he didn’t involve me in his plans; he waited until I had left the hospital to retrieve his loafers, his walker, and his checkbooks from his home, before he began entreating his favorite nurse Daisy to take him in, so he could live with her in one of her new home’s three bedrooms. My father’s escape idea was that he would pay Daisy to take care of him as she was already doing with her own mother.
I returned from my errand to a hospital room tangled in emotions, Daisy apologizing and comforting my father tearfully, “Bernie, don’t worry; you’ll meet new friends on the Cape, and you’ll be closer to your daughter and her family, too.”
Next came my dad’s bargaining phase: “Instead of going by ambulance to the Cape, I’ll ride in the car with you, and you can swing by the house on our way.”
“Why, what do you need from the house?”
“I need my laptop. How else am I going to work to pay for all this?”
“Dad, I already explained to your employer you are too frail to continue bookkeeping anymore. Then I returned their paperwork to them as we discussed.”
“But I still have their Quickbook database on my laptop.”
“Alright then, I’ll stop by the house and pick up your laptop while you’re in the ambulance. I’ll see you on the ferry or at Cape Regency Nursing Facility in Centerville. Even if you do arrive before I do, I’ll be there; I promise.”
And, as my dad taught me, I made good on my promise.
Once he was settled in his nursing home, and had lived there for a week, my dad and I had a frank conversation about where he would continue to live. I asked him what he wanted for himself, and he insisted he would remain right there at Cape Regency. “Sell the house.” When I asked him if he knew how much the facility would cost, he shook his head ‘no.’ I replied, “Fourteen grand a month.” “Sell the house!” he repeated emphatically. So, by mid-December 2017, my dad was comfortably ensconced at Cape Regency in Centerville.
I visited him nearly every day, and washed all his laundry myself. We celebrated our Christmas on Christmas Eve with Melissa at Cape Regency, bringing my dad’s Christmas presents for him to open in bed. He absolutely loved the docksider boat shoes from L.L. Bean his niece Bridget and her husband John picked out for him. The candles his niece Diane sent him were cherished but forbidden in the nursing home. Instead we turned on the batteries to a set of LED candles and watched as they flickered gently, casting a cozy light in an otherwise dark room, creating a sacred space and emitting a holy light for the holiday. In addition to these LED candles, Wes and I gave him some paperback thriller novels for distraction and some lounge pants for comfort. (He demanded that next time we give him sweatpants with pockets instead!)
***
Bowel Obstruction. Kidney Failure. Aspiration Pneumonia. On January 3, 2018, Cape Regency called me at home to inform me my dad’s white blood cell counts were elevated, and his liver functions were low. He was being transferred by ambulance to Cape Cod Hospital’s emergency room. When Wes and I arrived at the emergency room at 9:10 p.m., my father was delirious. When asked, ‘Do you know where you are?’ His reply: “The dentist?” (At his insistence, I had made a dental appointment for the purposes of creating new dentures, but he never did make it to that appointment.)
At the ER my dad was freezing cold and snapped at the staff and me to cover him up. Then, when I attempted to cover his shoulders, “What the hell do you think you’re doing? Get me another blanket!” Here was evidence of the snapping turtle my father had become. There was to be a blizzard that night, so we stayed until midnight, and it was unusually cold and busy in the ER, so we were warned that my dad might be there until the wee hours before being admitted. Sure enough, he was seen for a bowel obstruction the size of a small grapefruit, kidney failure, and aspiration pneumonia. He wasn’t eating or drinking, and he was weak.
***
The weekend of January 6 and 7, 2018 Wes and I brought Melissa to the hospital to visit her Pop Pop for the last time, and, on my forty-ninth birthday, January 7, I begged my father to please eat and drink something for me as a birthday gift. Although he did eat some pancakes and drink some chocolate Boost, he aspirated them shortly thereafter.
On January 8 my father’s doctor advised me she was recommending he be placed in hospice, preferably at the McCarthy House in East Sandwich, so the next day, my friend Susan and I toured the McCarthy House, an impressive facility with gracious spaces, comfortable rooms with views, and comforting staff. An ideal place to die. If there is such a thing. I was determined to get my dad admitted to the McCarthy House. He was actively dying.
***
I’m on my way; once again I’m on the boat over. My father is still alive, but I’m traveling to the island to begin cleaning out his house for sale. There is comfort in knowing he is just a phone call away. I’m daydreaming in my ferry seat, lulled into reverie by the rocking of the ferry, imagining I’m already there at his Edgartown home, where I know I will I feel surrounded by his comforting presence as well as notice the crater in my chest created by his absence from the house. It’s not the same, staying in his house without him. During one of these many visits to Edgartown without him, I will call my dad at Cape Regency and tell him so.
***
But now, here on the ferry, after his passing: Bring him back; bring him back, the ocean pleads and pulls shamelessly. You are there; you are not there. I look for you, searching, searching out the ferry’s porthole again. We are approaching what’s important, but the shoreline remains distant. Dad, is that your light I see ricocheting across the water’s surface?
I have brought a snack with me on board, two blueberry yogurts—one for me, one for him, as I have always done when he was alive. Only one spoon, so, again, as on that day in Cape Cod Hospital, we will have to share. In case I find him at sea. This time I will save both yogurts for him because I suddenly realize I can’t bear to eat alone while crossing over, and my heart pounds. Bring him back; bring him back.
***
As on that day in Cape Cod Hospital on January 11, 2018 when Hope Hospice came to evaluate him, and deemed my father “not acute enough” for access to the McCarthy House, death came creeping in among us, a distant visitor I almost recognized in my father’s eye. (“Not acute enough.” And yet he would die just three short days later.)
***
Bring him back; bring him back, the waves beat against the boat.
***
Barely eating or drinking anything, my father was so excited about his blueberry yogurt that day. His blue eyes sparkled, watering with eagerness and gratitude. I let him eat first, and then borrowed his spoon to eat my yogurt while he demanded to know where the rest of the yogurt was. Then he scolded me because I had brought only one yogurt for each of us, and he would’ve brought plenty more for us both.
That day my father rallied for hospice, sitting up in his hospital chair, carrying on a lucid conversation, albeit one that was difficult to discern without his damn dentures. Undaunted at the prospect of being discharged from Cape Cod Hospital back to his nursing home Cape Regency, my dad seemed to have his own plans: “Don’t worry; I’m going to beat them at their own game,” he declared.
And I didn’t doubt it. After all, he had rallied for the doctors at Cape Cod Hospital, despite the low liver functions, high white blood cell counts, a bowel obstruction the size of a small grapefruit, kidney failure, and aspiration pneumonia that got him admitted there in the first place. Who knew what tricks might be up my dad’s sleeve?
That same day he confided to me that he was worried about me. I was surprised because he was the one with the fatal ailments; he was the one who was slipping away. “Why are you worried about me; you’re the one in the hospital; I am the one who is so worried about you,” I responded.
“I’m worried about you; and I always will be. Because I’m your father.”
***
(If only I had given him both yogurts that day...)
***
When the ambulance arrived to transport him back to Cape Regency, Doug and Lance wheeled my dad on a stretcher around the hospital corners so fast that I could hardly keep up with them. In fact I got lost and missed the special elevator they were riding in, so I hopped on the closest elevator down to the first floor, where, upon exiting the Mugar 4 wing, I spotted Lance in the Coastal Ambulance waiting by the curb. Lance jumped out of the front seat and approached me, “Your dad is trying to describe the make and model of your car, so that you can follow us.” My father didn’t want to leave without me.
“Tell him not to worry. I know where he’s going; I’ll be right behind.”
When my dad returned to room 207A at Cape Regency, his occupational therapist popped in and asked him, “How are you doing, Bernie?” Much to my surprise my father responded, “You have no idea how happy I am to be back.”
On Friday, January 12, I accompanied Wes to Martha’s Vineyard—he for a work-related delivery, and I in search of an elusive checkbook for my father. Unfortunately, we both got trapped on the island due to high winds, rain, and heavy fog. That night we were forced to stay at the Clarion Inn on Main because all the boats were cancelled, and we were stranded.
On Saturday, January 13th, my dad called me in what would be our last conversation:
“How are you?” I asked, answering the phone.
“Terrible.”
“What’s wrong?”
Unintelligible response. Then: “Where are my clean clothes?”
“In my dryer in Yarmouth. Right now I’m trapped on the freight boat in the Atlantic; I’ll bring the clean laundry to you as soon as I get home.”
As exhausted as I was, upon arriving home, I folded my dad’s laundry for what would be the last time, and Wes drove me to Cape Regency, despite how tired we were from sleeping in a strange bed and waiting on standby for the boat home. Unbeknownst to us, all the while my dad was slowly dying at his nursing home. Wes waited in the car for me, so I promised to make it a quick visit.
When I arrived at Room 207A, the room was dark and empty. The light in the bathroom could be seen slipping through the cracks of the doorframe. It was unusually quiet, so I took the opportunity to fill my dad’s dresser and closet with his clean clothes. When I was done, I inquired about my father’s whereabouts from the nurse in charge on the second floor, who indicated that my dad was likely in the bathroom, so I dutifully waited a solid twenty minutes for my father to leave the bathroom. During that time I noticed that his bed was perfectly made up. How odd, I thought to myself… A man who always wears a knit cap in any weather or season, indoors or out. A man who demands his shoulders be covered with blankets at all times--this is a man who does not sleep, or even rest, on a perfectly made up bed. I waited as long as I possibly could then finally I left him a hurried note: “Dad, clean clothes in dresser and closet! Too tired to stay. Love, DD (‘Darling Daughter’).”
Back in the car I lamented to Wes that one day my dad would no longer be there, and all I would see there instead would be his empty bed. It was uncanny, as if I already knew he were gone. It wasn’t until the next morning when the phone rang at 6:45 a.m., and Marcus from Cape Regency introduced himself to inform me that my father had passed that morning, January 14, at 6:15 a.m. of respiratory failure that I finally realized: It was my dad who had been too tired to stay.
***
Holding hands, a little girl and her father have just gone up to the upper deck. How many times did we make this trip on weekends together to visit Melissa? Loyal. My mother always maintained, “You father is reliable.” He was always there for us. If it weren’t for my dad, Melissa and I would not enjoy the mother-daughter bond that we share to this day. For several years, my father arranged for supervised visits at locations ranging from Somerville; Lowell; Salem and Bedford, New Hampshire; Arlington; Allston; Sudbury; and Boston and Acton’s Children’s Museums. And he drove from Martha’s Vineyard to these locations every single weekend, no matter the weather, without fail, taking the boat over. Bring him back; bring him back; bring him back.
It was all about showing up for family, doing whatever it took. Melissa, your Pop Pop was always there for you. Who ran to the foot of the stairs, when you slipped down them in your feety pajamas? Who rocked you in your great-grandfather’s own platform rocker until you knew you were ok and stopped crying?
Arriving at wherever Melissa was to be picked up, my father would then deliver us to his home on Martha’s Vineyard. In summers our first stop might be the playground at Edgartown Elementary, where Melissa would jump up and down on the jungle gym, chanting, “Mommy’s house, Mommy’s house!” Her open smile--how glorious!
In wintertime, we’d go straight to the Wharf Pub for their lightly fried calamari with Thai peanut sauce or to Pop Pop’s house, and immediately we’d play the Barney videotape, its familiarity a soothing routine for an anxious toddler. Dexter, Pop Pop’s rescued black lab, would greet us. As aggressive as Dexter was with other dogs and strangers, he and Melissa had an immediate undeniable bond. One time Dexter nudged infant Melissa protectively with his snout to prevent her from rolling off the sofa. However Dexter was unpredictable, a biter. He bit a passerby, and Pop Pop had to put his dog to sleep so that Dexter would never harm the very lives he sought to protect.
***
The Island Home approaches Vineyard Haven. This time, alone, I watch as the ferry passes the distant masts of the lilting yachts moored in the harbor, bobbing in our uneven wake, rising and falling, bring him back; bring him back. Each vessel a soul tethered in place but bobbing in a vast ocean of choices. Not long ago you were my anchor, my rock. How does it feel to lose one’s rock? Bring him back, bring him back. How each vessel careens, and we are leaning into each other’s lives, each encounter amongst us a ripple, however slight or tangential, however direct or profound, upon a lifetime. And time passes as sand, slipping through our fingers, our fates listing about. Wind whipped from our sails, whether we imbibe the fresh air in sips or gulps. All I ask is that you carry him homeward, carry him home.
***
One, two, three bumps against the pilings; the ferry has docked. Once again memories have carried me across the Vineyard Sound, bringing me back home. Where are you; perhaps you rode the boat over ahead? I look everywhere for you. I almost see you in your windbreaker and that navy blue knit cap, all three of your cashmere scarves casually wrapped around your neck. But you are no longer there to greet me at the dock, I realize, nor does your Honda Element, black as a hearse, await in the drop off/pick up area. I look for you everywhere, anyway. I will forever be searching for you, my lost father. Who will I rely on? Who will I seek advice from? Bring him back, bring him back. The moral compass he instilled deep within me, forever my guide. But now the tides turn, and now we must navigate these turbulent waters on our own.
And this is when I realize I have lost him; he is gone forever. Not just because he won’t be here to greet me anymore, but because I lost him again long before we even reached the island; I lost him somewhere on the voyage, on the boat over--between the outer banks of my memories and the watery illusion of life itself alive in the surface’s reflection. Somewhere adrift at sea. And no amount of wishing or searching will bring him back. This is a solo trip now. And still, the tides pull and turn. And I am overcome. So this is grief, leaving the anticipation of memories behind in the boat’s wake?
***
Later I will dream that my dad attends his own memorial service. Here, in my dreams, he is, as always, trailblazing in the wilderness, walking a short distance ahead of me. And I call out, “Wait up, dad; I’m right behind you.”
***
Yet here I am, as I leave the ferry behind, still searching for you. I thought I almost glimpsed you with a cup of “the world’s worst coffee,” returning from the snack bar just before we docked. But it was just the little girl and her father returning downstairs from the upper deck. Where are you now? Somewhere ahead of me. Having traded one shore for another, we have crossed a vast ocean of memories together, staying afloat one another’s spirits, as on buoys, until we each reach our last port of call, moored forever. Is there nothing so bittersweet and so achingly beautiful as the boat over, full of anticipation, bringing us back together, nearly within reach of one another, so that we may once again find the place to which we belong?