I had just come in from visiting my father at Maine Medical Center, when the phone rang. I had a sinking feeling that it was the hospital calling. I put the receiver to my ear, and heard a voice. It was barely audible over my pounding heart. “Your father’s taken a turn for the worse,” it said. “You and your family should come back in.”  I hung up, not even knowing whom I’d been speaking to. At that moment it hardly mattered.

I found my mother getting ready for bed. I told her what the caller had said. She quickly began getting dressed. I called my two brothers, John and Armand, to tell them Mom and I were heading back in. “You should come too,” I said. I followed that with calls to my two daughters, Angela and Adrianna.