slept in soiled sheets and possibly starved to death? Or with people who would feed and clean him, in a place that terrified him?
With a quiver in my voice I couldn’t quite control, I asked, “Where is it?”
I spent the next two weeks taking care of my dad. I fed him the best I could, read him the Greysheet when he was awake, and slept on the floor beside his bed. He soiled himself every evening, forcing me to purchase adult diapers for him, much to his embarrassment. He slept most of the afternoon.
While he rested on the couch, I visited a number of extended care facilities: not just the one that the neighbor had recommended, but those within a two-hour radius. In the end, the neighbor was right. The place she mentioned was clean, and the staff came across as professional, but most important, the director seemed to have taken a personal interest in my dad’s care. Whether that was because of the neighbor or my dad’s doctor, I never found out.
Price wasn’t an issue. The facility was notoriously expensive, but because my dad had a government pension, Social Security, Medicare, and private insurance to boot (I could imagine him signing on the insurance salesman’s dotted line years before without really understanding what he was paying for), I was assured that the only cost would be emotional. The director—fortyish and brown haired, whose kindly manner somehow reminded me of Tim—understood and didn’t press for an immediate decision. Instead, he handed me a stack of information and assorted forms and wished my dad the best.
That evening, I raised the subject of moving to my dad. I was leaving in a few days and didn’t have a choice, no matter how much I wanted to avoid it.
He said nothing while I spoke. I explained my reasons, my worries, my hope that he would understand. He asked no questions, but his eyes remained wide with shock, as if he’d just heard his own death sentence.
When I finished, I desperately needed a moment alone. I patted him on the leg and went to the kitchen to get a glass of water. When I returned to the living room, my dad was hunched over on the couch, downcast and trembling. It was the first time I ever saw him cry.
In the morning, I began to pack my dad’s things. I went through his drawers and his files, the cupboards and closets. In his sock drawer, I found socks; in his shirt drawer, only shirts. In his file cabinet, everything was tabbed and ordered. It shouldn’t have been surprising, but in its own way it was. My dad, unlike most of humanity, had no secrets at all. He had no hidden vices, no diaries, no embarrassing interests, no box of private things he kept all to himself. I found nothing that further enlightened me about his inner life, nothing that might help me understand him after he was gone. My dad, I knew then, was just as he’d always seemed to be, and I suddenly realized how much I admired him for that.
When I finished gathering his things, my dad lay awake on the couch. After a few days of eating regularly, he’d regained a bit of strength. There was the faintest gleam in his eyes, and I noticed a shovel leaning against the end table. He held out a scrap of paper. On it was what appeared to be a hastily scrawled map, labeled “BACKYARD” in a shaky hand.
“What’s this for?”
“It’s yours,” he said. He pointed to the shovel.
I picked up the shovel, followed the directions on the map to the oak tree in the backyard, marched off paces, and began to dig. Within minutes the shovel sounded on metal, and I retrieved a box. And another one, beneath it. And another to the side. Sixteen heavy boxes in all. I sat on the porch and wiped the sweat from my face before opening the first.
I already knew what I’d find, and I squinted at the reflection of gold coins shimmering in the harsh sunlight of a southern summer. At the bottom of that box, I found the 1926-D buffalo nickel, the one we’d searched for and found together, knowing it was the only coin that really meant anything to me.
The next day, my last day on leave, I made arrangements for the house: turning off the utilities, forwarding the mail, finding someone to keep the lawn mowed. I stored the unearthed coins in