The day starts out like many others. Wake up. Listen to birds singing their morning songs. Jog. Slice strawberries and toast bread for my daughter’s breakfast. Return to the basement and begin work. Answer emails. Make phone calls. Plan. Edit. Write. Re-write. Collaborate. Occasionally I ascend to help with some part of home-schooling. Today’s science lesson, the anatomy of a squid and how this amazing animal uses each of these parts.

About 4 p.m. I call it a day. Now it’s time to focus on the child. What would you like to do today? “Rock climbing?” she asks. We pile into the car and drive to her favorite place to scramble. From the parking lot near the beginning (or end) of the trail I can see the place I used to work. Once upon a time, it felt like home. Now it’s just a memory.

It’s five in the afternoon and we’re almost a mile into the woods when the phone rings. It’s my mother. She’s upset.

“Something’s wrong with your father!” I just saw him the previous week and we walked the dog together. He was moving slower than usual, and grumbled about social distancing and the general state of the world. But this wasn’t unusual necessarily.

“What’s wrong?”

“He’s … not making sense.”

“How so?”

“He’s trying to talk but keeps trailing off and I can’t understand anything he says.”

This is one of those points in a person’s life when everything changes.

“Hang up and call 911! Do it right now mom!” I don’t wait for her answer. Phone off, I holler to my daughter and we race back to the car. I drive fast. Less than thirty minutes later, I pull up to the house just in time to see an EMT slam the door of the ambulance shut and pull out of the driveway, red lights flashing. My mother stands nearby crying.

That was almost three weeks ago. I haven’t seen my father since. And I really don’t know if I ever will.

The month of May is, and was and probably forever will be the one I most closely associate with these big events.

The ones that change my life.

The ones that break my heart.