He gaped at me. Mouth open, eyes wide. His cheeks were hollow and his skin was taut around his bones. My father was on his death-bed, rendered speechless by his stroke and unable to swallow. His stroke struck two weeks earlier. The doctors respected his Medical Directive by not force-feeding him; now he lay waiting for the inevitable.

I wondered, “Do I really know this man?” We were never really close. I never said, “I love you, Dad.” We’d hugged, maybe, a few times. Sure, I knew his mannerisms, his quirks, his likes and dislikes. He came home every night unless he was traveling for business. I played golf with him, table tennis when I was younger. He taught me how to fence. Does that sum it up?

He grunted urgently and tried to talk with his eyes. What would he say? I couldn’t tell and averted my gaze. I held his hand for a little while; it was foreign. He was peaceful and content, parched and emaciated. Then he died.

I thought about my own two boys, wondered if they knew me any better than I knew Father, and I didn’t like my answer. Perhaps the similarities between Father and I, between the boys and me, were more than superficial. We walk the same and act the same. We have the same sense of humor, the same interests. Are we more alike than that? Do we have the same emotions? The same sexuality? And if my children embody me, and I embody my father, do the boys embody their great grandfather stringing an arc across many generations?