Even with a surgical cap and a mask, Mike’s smile still escaped from beyond the barriers of blue polypropylene. He held up the fuzzy hospital socks I was helpless to put on. Without a word, he covered my swollen feet.

A small engraved bell with a clapper sat on the teak coffee table in the room where my father lay dying. He no longer had the strength to call my mother so this was the instrument he used to summon her. I heard it from the kitchen and went into the living room.