My dad sat in his favorite chair looking at me, his eyes glistening and unable to focus. He could no longer remember my name or form a coherent sentence. Suspenders held up the pants that no longer fit his waist because he had become so frail and thin. Dementia had stolen his mind and Parkinson’s disease had weakened his body. When his eyes were finally able to focus on me, I thought I saw a glimmer of recognition, but with dementia, you can never be sure.

A few months after that day, my mom called to tell me that my dad had fallen. “He won’t recover,” she said. But he did have time. Anywhere from a couple of days to a few weeks. Time enough for me to get on a plane and say goodbye in person. A gift, in a way, if not for the pandemic.

A decision had to be made, sooner rather than later. Do I risk getting and potentially spreading COVID-19 to see my dad one last time?

I stepped outside to clear my head and a palm tree caught my attention, its palm fronds waving back and forth, reflecting the early May sunlight directly into my eyes. I tried to turn away from it, but the rustling of its leaves was insistent. The fluttering became more emphatic, like it was trying to tell me something. I didn’t have the energy to imagine what a palm tree could have to say to me, and I knew it couldn’t help me make this decision.

I consulted my husband. I talked it over with my mom. I spoke to the hospice nurse. The conversations were all similar: saying goodbye to my dad in person would put my eighty-year-old mom at risk, but it was ultimately a choice only I could make. An impossible choice.

Like waves that wash away a beach over the course of several years, the process of losing someone with dementia is a long, slow erosion. After years of watching the sand diminish a little each day, you wake up one day to realize that most of the beach is already gone. You no longer recognize the person in front of you. You are left grieving your loved one before you physically lose that person, and yet, you never really get the opportunity to say goodbye.

On that day months ago, it was hard for me to see my dad in the man staring back at me. My mind was not capable of holding the image before me with the image of who he had been in his prime: a dedicated pediatrician, a loving family man, kind, thoughtful, and generous. A mind once bright with wit and intelligence. As much as he could no longer remember me, I could no longer remember him.

I wanted the chance to say a proper goodbye. To maybe make that final connection that I hadn’t been able to make for so long and to remember who he had really been. But to do so, I would have to go through two major airports, board a plane filled with other people, and rent a car. There was no guarantee that I wouldn’t pick up COVID-19 along the way, and if I gave it to my mom, I would never forgive myself.

I needed to find something, anything, in my house that would connect me to my dad. Years ago, he had given me a small, delicate porcelain vase. Because I have mischievous cats known for breaking anything fragile in sight, I had safely packed it away in our garage. Or so I thought. I searched through every box, dust and old packing pieces flying around me. I sneezed into bags that hadn’t been open in almost a decade. I pulled apart closets. It was nowhere to be found.

Without that vase, I felt lost. Why hadn’t I taken better care of it? Why couldn’t I remember where I had put it, supposedly for safekeeping? Why couldn’t I find anything else in my house that he had given me?

As I exited our garage, a familiar rustle filled the air. There it was again, that palm tree. Growing up during dreary Midwestern winters, palm trees had always been a symbol for me: of warmth, of light, of brighter things to come. It’s one of the reasons I chose Los Angeles as my adult hometown. But this palm tree was different. The rustling was relentless. Its presence stern. I certainly didn’t need another bad omen in my life right now. Losing that vase was bad enough.

I consulted a few more people. Some urged me to go so my mom would not be alone. Some reinforced how little we really knew about this deadly virus. I wondered if my dad was confused, this devoted family man, that his children were not by his side.

I had inherited my love of both books and art from my dad; that, I remembered. And while he had not given me any art books, I remembered one in particular that reminded me of him. It was about Picasso’s Guernica: a work of art we both loved. I knew it was on a shelf in our office. I rushed to the spot where I knew it must be, but just like the vase, it had vanished. I passed over the leather-bound versions of Shakespeare’s plays that had come from my dad’s library. I skipped over the book about philosophy that he had raved about for years. All I could see was what was missing.

If I couldn’t find the vase, I was convinced that the book might help me find those missing memories. Deep in a plastic storage bin, I found it safely packed away with other art books I now remembered I owned. I clutched it to my chest and took it back into the house. This book would never leave my sight again.

I opened it, waiting for the memories to flood in and the connection to my dad to be reborn. But it didn’t happen. A book is just a book. I placed it on my nightstand. I didn’t know what else to look for. What else might bring back the memory of the man who was my father.

Would being there in person to say goodbye bring his memory back to me?

A couple of weeks later, my dad passed in his sleep. I was not there to see him go. It was a risk I was not willing to take. It was a choice that will haunt me for the rest of my life, albeit a necessary one.

In the weeks following his death, I stayed close to home, grappling with grief and hesitant to step out into the heat of a pandemic summer. My husband and I bought an inflatable kiddie pool big enough for two adults, set it up in our backyard, and cracked open a couple of beers. As I lounged back, looking up into the sky, a palm tree filled my view. That palm tree. Again. That endless rustle.

Rustle, rustle, rustle.

I wanted to yell at it, “Leave me alone, palm tree!”

And that’s when a phrase popped into my head: “All infinity in the palm of your hand.” It’s a line from a well-known William Blake poem, but I know it as a line from a book that my dad had lent me almost twenty years ago, when I was in my twenties. I don’t remember its title, but the book was about quantum physics, and the overall concept was that everything on the planet, like the key in your hand that opens your front door, is made up of quantum particles. And these particles have moved through the ebb and flow of millennia and will continue to do so long after we’re gone. That key that you hold in your palm, or even your palm itself, may once have been something else a thousand years ago and may become something else a thousand years from now.

I have never been much of a believer when it comes to religion, so the first thing I said to my dad after reading the book was, “See, Dad, it is all about science.” But my Catholic father read it and said to me, “See, Teresa, it proves the existence of God.” He didn’t mind that I often saw things differently from him. In fact, he enjoyed it. He liked trying to convince me and letting me try to convince him. It was never an argument for him, but a discussion, and he always respected my ability to think for myself.

Finally, I had remembered something about my dad, not as he died but as he had lived in his prime. Not a laundry list of titles or nouns or adjectives, but something real. Not an object that he gave me, but an interaction. A connection. I remembered how he used to call me maca Teresa (a term of endearment in his native Catalonian), how he’d kiss me repeatedly on the cheeks every time he saw me until it annoyed me, and how he cried with me over the phone when my beloved cat was so sick that not even the vet would tell me if she could survive. Yes, it’s hard to remember. It can be so painful to know that the person you loved so much is gone, but with those memories, you get to remember how much they loved you too. You don’t really have to say goodbye.

That palm tree in my yard really did have something to tell me. My symbol of brighter futures had returned. But not long ago I found out that palm trees are not native to Southern California. The iconic LA palm tree was brought to Southern California from other parts of the world that have similar climates. One of those places was Spain. My dad was born and raised in Spain. Maybe, just maybe, the palm tree in my yard, my palm tree (as I like to call it now), has some quantum particles from Spain. Is that wishful thinking? Sure, it is, but I don’t care. Because now, every time I look up at my palm tree, I see the loving gaze of my father. I remember him now, and I know that he remembers me too.

-Teresa Vilaseca

After getting an MFA in film production, Teresa Vilaseca worked as a motion graphics and VFX producer for many years, but her heart has always belonged to storytelling. She has written screenplays, and she directed, produced, and cowrote the web series Super Lame Powers. She continues to write scripts, but has decided to tackle novels and is on the second draft of her first YA novel. When not writing, you can find her handmaking jewelry for her online jewelry store, hanging out with her husband, dog, and two cats, or planning her next travel adventure (when the pandemic is over).