Strangers or Friends?

My dad is in the ICU.

It’s his second hospital admission in two weeks—unresolved blood clots, a rapidly blackening leg. It hurts when he rests but not when he walks. They operated for DVT. It didn’t work. Or maybe it did, just not enough.

You’d think, as an only child, I’d be desperate to go.

I just need him to be okay so I don’t have to go.

My husband—who just had back surgery and still can’t sit for more than ten minutes—offered to make the 23-hour journey. To stand beside my mother, the one who has never stood beside me…

I love my dad. I think. Maybe. Maybe just the idea of him.

And maybe sharing this with quasi-strangers (or should I say quasi-friends?) is just me trying to hear my own thoughts out loud.