## The Last Thing
My father’s name is on a stone now, in a cemetery in the city where he spent most of his adult life. His dates and his name in granite.
I visited once, in June, the first summer after. I sat there for a while and talked to him, which is a thing I’d never done before and which I’d have told you I found the whole concept of uncomfortable. But I found I had things to say, and there was nowhere else to say them, so I said them.
I told him I got the text. That I understood what he meant, that the paperwork was done. That I’d found Mara Chen and gone through the formal process and everything was where it was supposed to be.
I told him I’d read the space program book. That I’d found the part about the preparation protocols. That I understood why he’d found it moving.
I told him I had the fern photograph on my phone and a fern in my apartment window that was doing reasonably well.
I told him about Vanessa — not everything, not the whole complicated year. Just that we were in contact and that I was trying to be her sister in the ways I could. That I understood more about why she’d done what she did than I had at the time, though understanding it didn’t entirely resolve it. That I was trying to carry it accurately.
I told him I wished he’d had the conversation. The one about Christmas, the one the amendment was trying to have. I told him I understood that he couldn’t, or didn’t know how to, and that I was trying to be okay with that. That somedays I was more okay with it than others.