Sometimes it happens like this; a small series of events lead to a memory, and then his face is before me, healthy and full, eyes dancing with mischief.

Just as quickly, his visage shrinks, pulls inward, cheeks sucking in and eyes getting larger and larger, until that blank, brown wide stare is eating me up. The look in his eyes those last months haunts me. I know the pain made them so; I know I lost him long before we buried him under a hot August sun.

***

Tomorrow, a doctor will place a large needle in my knee to drain out an excess of fluid. It hurts, my knee. I want the pain to go away, and I am almost looking forward to the sting of the steel against my flesh. A pinch and a burn and a wince, and then, perhaps, relief.

I am worried about it, a little bit scared.

I think of him in moments like that, in the chemo chair. Needle, sting, cold medicine in his veins. What was he thinking then? Did he think of us? Did he picture his own death?

Was he scared?

This last thought is the one I cannot bear.

***

Two weeks before my father died, I ran into him at our family doctor’s office. I don’t remember why I was there, now it hardly matters.

I left the examination area and saw a ghostly man, wan and thin, waiting to check in. He had a stare as long and empty as the sea. He walked with a slow, halting gait and his hands shook.

My eyes slid away, not wanting to see such pain.

A moment later the breath left my body.

I was looking at my father.

A wraith.

***

I can’t remember what month it was. It had to have been May or June.

I wore maternity clothes, though I barely showed. I was just so happy, so exuberant, I wanted to show the world the life inside me.

The phone rang as I pulled pair of banded pants over the tiny bump below my waist. It was my mother, her voice confused and fretful.

She was leaving the house for the day; my dad wasn’t doing well. She hated to leave him alone, she said, but she’d paid for the seminar and my father was forcing her out the door. Can you check on him? Will you call me right away if he doesn’t answer?

Without thinking I told her I would work from their house. I gathered my laptop and my papers and walked to my car, pushing away the pulsing fear. Not my daddy, I thought. He’s fine, he’s just having a bad day, it’s the chemo.

Not my daddy.

***

His drawn face greeted me sternly, reprimanding me for abandoning my cube for his bedside. An executive at the corporation that paid my salary, he looked askance at working remotely.

I’m fine, you should be at work.

He was fine that day, after all. Tired, but with enough energy to handle a conference call with his trademark bluster.

Later, he rested and held his belly. A call to the doctor’s office meant a run to the pharmacy. I was happy to fetch his medicine.

***

He pressed $50 into my palm.

I don’t want you paying for my prescriptions, he told me. I tried to wave him off, lying that I’d bought some other items for myself, as well.

What? he said. A magazine? Take the money. You need it more than I do.

He was so small, in the big wing chair. He wore pajamas and his scuffed slippers. The stubborn, grey strands of hair on his bald pate stood straight up in the air. Still, he smelled of soap and aftershave.

I held the money, bringing it to my nose in an automatic gesture. It smelled like him, just as my lunch money always did.

***

Later, my mother called.

Thank you, she told me. Thank you. I was just so worried.

He seemed fine to me, I told her, knowing in my heart that nothing would ever be fine again, not like it was before. Not like days on the beach, chocolate-chip muffins and Christmas mornings scented with bacon.

No, not fine.

Fine comes in so many forms for me now, but always there is the empty place in my heart, like the hole where a healthy tooth comes loose.

He said you are such a good girl, my mother told me.

He did? I asked, surprised.

Yes, she said. And you are. Such a good girl.

***

Sometimes it comes to me in strange ways. A movie released before his death. A song from my youth. A photograph that doesn’t even include his image.

Dad was alive then!

***

What can I tell my children about this man, this person who is so inextricably part of who I am? How can I bring him to life for them? Should I? Do they care about a grandfather they’ve never met? A grandfather who will always be a stack of condolence cards inside a black cardboard box?

I have hundreds of them, those notes and cards.

Your father saved my job. Your father meant the world to me. Your father was such a good man. Your father loved you.

My heart knows my father loved me. The last words we exchanged just hours before he died were “I love you.”

He said it to me all the time: I love you.

But one day, in a spring so far away that it seems like a dream, he told my mother that I was a good girl.

I wish I could hear him say that himself, just one more time.