After my mother’s stroke, I kept wanting 
my father to say, How’re you doing? 

To say, I know how close 
the two of you 
were.

To say, You look tired. 
Let me buy you coffee. 

I wanted him to help me 
with medical histories, insurance 
reviews, plans 
for long-term care. With family 
and friends asking 
for updates. With the phone calls 
to the lawyer, the bureaucracy 
of her damaged brain. 

I wanted him to let me 
have a turn 
being helpless. 

But that’s not what my father did. 

What he did 
was remain the man I’d always known. 

What he did 
was say, one afternoon, 
after I’d taken him to the store 
and the dentist and warmed his meal 
and gotten off the phone 
with the rehab center, arguing 
that my mother needed more 
time—what he did, 
that afternoon, weeks after 
he’d found my mother collapsed 
in the back of the garage, 
was say, 
with a small shake of his head, 
How did I never 
know you 
were so like her? 

Bio: Jennifer L. Freed