The Christmas comment stung because it wasn’t entirely unfair.
I had chosen, for a long time, to let the geographic distance function as an excuse for emotional distance, and I had not always done that consciously. I had sometimes told myself the story that I was doing what I could, when in fact I was doing what was comfortable. There’s a difference. My father saw the difference, which is why he made the Christmas comment, and also why the Christmas comment hurt him to have made, which is why the text followed, and then the amendment.
He was trying to tell me that I mattered. He was also, in making the amendment at all, telling me something about the years that led up to it. That there had been a gap. That he’d contributed to it. That he wanted to address it, four months after Christmas, in the way he knew how.
I could have called more. I could have visited more. I could have done more than I did during his decline, and I didn’t, and I’m going to have to live with that. The fact that what Vanessa did in the will situation was wrong doesn’t change what I didn’t do in the caregiving situation. Both things are true simultaneously, in the same family, between people who are doing their imperfect best.
## Mara Chen, a Year Later
I sent Mara Chen a note, around the one-year mark. Not a formal communication — just a note, on paper, the kind that required a stamp. Thanking her for her professionalism in the process. Saying that his wishes had been honored and that it had mattered.