I’m sitting in the living room predawn dark, highway roar of heat at my back, wondering if I’ll ever find my way back.

This is March 2023:  one 17-year-old boy, distracted, college admissions decisions slowly revealing themselves over the month; one man too young to die, but dying still, immobile on a hospital bed in our back room, sleeping more and more, confused more and more; the two of us, 50-somethings, our devotion and isolation intertwined. You are spread thin over days of nothingness pierced occasionally by the deep needs of the dying. I am here, trying to help, but never feeling like it is enough, never feeling like I am on the inside.

At night, it’s the worst. How did I get here, disconnected, disillusioned? I can barely keep up friendships, have discarded long-time dissatisfying connections, made impatient and picky by my profession. Deep listening, heavy holding, not-judging have used me up. And you? Such a devoted brother, about to lose what is left of growing up, floating with only the boy and me to tether you to this world. I wonder:  are we enough?

Hours of nothingness, clients canceled, disembodied voices from the tv in the back room, cooking instructions for those who no longer eat. We’re in suspended animation, the days thick as ointment.

This is March 18, 2023, 1:30am. Your brother tries to get up in the middle of the night (“an experiment,” he tells you later), the inevitable fall, the confusion, the eventual visit by paramedics to lift his six-foot frame back into the hospital bed. No lasting injuries, just battered delusions and pride. He’s as fine as a dying man could be, asleep now, as I hope you are, too, and the boy, back in bed.

 Me? I’m here on the couch, sleeping dogs curled to either side of me.

 I want it to be over and I feel guilty about it. Whose life is it, anyway, and who are I to decide? I am here and not here, occupying the in-between, with no room for transcendence, a helpmeet for those who are used to doing it all themselves.

When I go, give me vistas, an open window, a person next to me holding my hand. Or make it like the dream I had months ago, the knowledge that I had the pills to do the job, the approval of doctors (she’s terminal) and my family (we don’t want you to suffer). I took the drugs, I watched my spark slowly dim, I touched the velvety darkness.

But hopefully that is years away. Perhaps it will never happen, at least not like that.

And so we attend and wait.