The text said my 95-year-old father, who lived far from me, in a facility in Ohio, had stopped shaving, showering, and changing his clothes. He just slept most of the day. My first reaction was, I wonder what he dreams. Alexandre Dumas, at the end of his life, dreamed he stood on the peak of a mountain made up of all the books he had written – The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo, etc. Little by little, the mountain shifted, slithered, gave way beneath his feet, and he found himself standing on a pile of ash. The dream left him in tears. His son quietly held him after the only time he ever recounted it.
Fathers and Sons
