It may as well be air-borne.

Doctors just gave him between three and nine months. "I think the consensus is that we will be lucky to have him for 3 more months," she said on the fifteenth.

"I think if anything my family and I would agree on that we just don't want my dad to suffer anymore. That is our prayer."

Yes, his suffering is over. And that is why death scares me, because the suffering is meted out on the ones left living.

"He had gone into a coma but at the very end he opened his eyes and we were all there and got to say our last words to him."

When I read that aloud, I couldn't. I broke down. I was there. The hospital bed, the white, the shine of linoleum. The man who had been my protector, who put me to sleep at nights with stories, who taught me to whistle. All the things that Dad means.

The eyes that would crease with a smile, did they still smile? What life was left? How much of the man still remains?

What to say at the end? When every moment of silence over the years returns and you regret the minutes or days of anger at the same time you remember the ecstacy of being swung in circles under the warm sun.

What is the moment of death, when the life leaves, when the shell is there? Is it a whisper, a quiet breath, a jagged breath, a Thank You and a goodbye?

Who clings to him last? The wife, the child? Who can bear to see him moved from his bed? Is a sheet pulled over his face, is a nurse called, a doctor? How long until even the warmth is gone?

Death is anti-aesthetic.

But what of the life lived? He adopted her, he gave her a name a family a home. He fathered her. He loved her. He knew her and called her Daughter.

He watched her dance, listened to the hip-hop, heard the floor shake from practice in her room. Saw her grow more beautiful every year.

Anne, my thoughts are with you. My tears fall, though not as often as yours have and will. You've cried for months, hidden in your room sometimes, sobbing on a shoulder other times. As you've watched your dad. As you're thankful for his humor despite the pain.