53 Hail Marys
How Mom got Dad ‘straight into heaven’ and ignited my decade-long search for a connection I didn’t understand
The first thing I did after touching down in St. Louis was call my sister, who had agreed to give me a ride. She was running late, which annoyed me. I mean, my flight was on time and the whole point of this trip was to see my dad before his condition worsened.
I occasionally ask a lot of the universe. I can be special that way. People have things to do that don’t revolve around me. My sister was doing the favor, fetching me at the airport and sparing me another Uber ride with my knees buckled to my chin in the filthy back seat of a Prius with Metallica turned up. But would it have killed her to be on time?
“I’ll be waiting in the usual place,” I said. We had done this before.
“I just got in the car,” she said. “See you in 20.”
I rolled my carry-on to our well-established meeting point with a thousand thoughts clouding my head. I now had 20 minutes more to obsess in solitude over the events that had brought me here.
Dad was just 79. I wouldn’t call him fit. He was overweight and a former smoker; he drank too much and ate red meat like T. rex. But he wasn’t categorically unhealthy, and no one saw his setback…
