His blood pressure was seventy over palpable when I few into town. Again, my mother took me straight to thenursing home from the airport. I found him curled up on his side under a thin sheet, breathing shallowly, his eyesshut loosely. His muscle had wasted away, but his face was smooth and calm and almost entirely free of wrinkles, and his hands, which had changed not at all, seemed curiously large in comparison to the rest of him. There's no way to know if he recognized my voice, but within minutes of my arrival his blood pressure climbed to 120/90. I worried then, worry even now, that I made things harder for him by arriving; that he'd reached the point of being ready to die but was ashamed to perform such a private or disappointing act in front of one of his sons.