Despite the hierarchal structure of the pack, a dog sees itself as part of a team. To be sure, there are designations within the pack: Alpha, foot soldier, guardian, and so forth, but when a dog feels the contribution is equal and necessary, it will do what it must without question or regard for its own safety. Dogs are often seen as being valiant in this manner, but it is really a simple logic computation.

My dog is no different. Sophia knows she is responsible for the perimeter and the safety of the pack – in this case, my mother and myself. The locations have varied, being at one point my apartment, and another my parents’ home, but the charge remained the same all along. That said, Sophia went to great lengths to do her job and do it well, but always sought our feedback and praise that hers was a job well done.

I say this because at the moment she is chasing a squirrel around the back yard, a squirrel that has deftly navigated the maze of oaks on the sixth fairway beyond the wrought iron boundaries of our yard, squeezed through the red blanket of bougainvilleas running parallel to the course sand traps, and has found itself in the domain of a sixty pound ugly dog.

Ordinarily, Sophia took silent delight in ridding her fortress of its trespassers, but knowing both her charges were home and awake, wanted us to know that she was taking her job seriously. She also wanted to be told how well she was doing her job and for us to realize she was pulling her weight with her contributions to the pack. So she did what any other dog would have done in this situation: Sounded the alarm.

I came running out following the first series or snarls and growls to find Sophia in mad pursuit of the squirrel, who had no idea it would be going up against such a clever perimeter guard. What the squirrel didn’t know going in was that Sophia was well rested, ready, and willing. As there were no trees in our back yard, the option of taking high ground was not available, and so the squirrel resigned itself to running in circles while coming up with an escape route.

Standing at the French Doors that open to our back patio, I took in the pursuit and grabbed the handmade antique brass handle, ready to open the door. Opening the door would take Sophia’s pursuit to an entirely different level.

Opening the door, I give the words of encouragement that will ratchet things up: “Good girl; get the squirrel!”

Seeing me in this arena meant two things for my ugly dog: 1) I was seeing Sophia in action and thus confirming her contributions to the pack, and 2) I put myself, the alpha, in harm’s way by stepping onto the same playing field as the intruder. Because of this, extra steps would be taken. The trespassing squirrel must die.

Sophia growled with extra vigor and picked up her pace. The squirrel, not expecting this in the least, nearly wiped out trying to corner hard and change its trajectory from the oncoming dog. Sophia leapt forward with jaws open, just missing the squirrel’s bushy tail. The squirrel, now possibly coming off its adrenaline rush from the imminent danger and thinking for the first time, spotted a slot in the fencing where it could squeeze through, and changed its bearings. Sophia spotted the squirrel’s escape route too, and with another growl and huff, rushed at top speed to intercept. Having seen a flyer from the homeowner’s association about squirrels on the golf course possibly carrying the plague, its origin perhaps in the squirrels that made their way down from the Santa Monica foothills to the north of Brentwood, I wondered just what will happen should Sophia claim this one as a prize. A squirrel with the plague is fine; a dog carrying it was no good.

Just as I turned my focus back to Sophia’s pursuit, the squirrel paused just enough to squeeze itself through the opening in the fencing, a mere fraction of a second before Sophia slammed carelessly into the same spot, the force of her body causing a rippling effect on the wrought iron fencing along both sides of the impact. She stopped for a moment, as if dazed by the collision, and then sniffed around the area for any lingering trace of the intruder. When none can be found Sophia turned and looked towards me, her curly-queue tail ebbing and bouncing joyfully.

“Good girl,” I told her. “Good dog.” That’s all Sophia needed to hear. The mission was a success in her eyes. After all, the intruder didn’t get into the house, and I still stood unharmed. The pack had been preserved to see another day, and just as important, the alpha had seen the contributions of a team member to the fullest.

The dog trotted over to me and I bent over to pet her. “That’s my ugly, ugly,” I told her, picking her favorite spot on the neck to be pet. Afterward, Sophia picked a spot of sun on the patio and sprawled out. In five minutes she’ll be asleep, attempting to cash in on her daily quota of 16 to 18 hours of sleep the Sharpei breed requires. She’ll fall asleep knowing it’s good to be part of a team. It’s good to have your partner know you have their back, no questions asked.

Sophia’s right, it is good to be part of a team. I say this because at the moment it is what I’m dreaming about.

When I was younger I played ice hockey, a novelty in itself when considering there were only a smattering of ice hockey rinks in Southern California. This was the case despite the importing of Canada’s Great White Hope – Wayne Gretzky – and the advent of NHL expansion to places like San Jose and Anaheim. While roller hockey and street hockey had become a cultural phenomenon in the southland, ice hockey never experienced the same tangential growth. But my parents realized when I was young that I enjoyed playing the sport and encouraged it, taking me to compete in peewee leagues in nearby Culver City and Burbank. Ice hockey players traveled in the same circles and everyone knew everyone since you usually ran into each other at the same three or four rinks. As a result teams grew up together with very few players opting to leave one squad for another. It was a place where a great many long-term friendships were forged. When I was six or seven I was paired at my defense position with another boy and we clicked immediately. The chemistry was undeniable. We communicated so well and helped each other out along the blue line that it was as if we were inside each other’s heads. Our playing styles complemented each other, too; I was a left-handed shot, while he shot right. I modeled my style of play after the NHL players I idolized like Kevin Lowe, Mark Howe, Steve Smith, and Mike Ramsey – all guys who were the stay-at-home type of defensemen that stayed back, blocked shots, and cleared the defensive zone in front of the crease to give their goaltender clear sight lines. Dean, my defensive partner, was the offensive, freewheeling type, just like the guys he grew up idolizing – Paul Coffey, Bobby Orr, Steve Duchesne – flashy players who could move the puck up ice, make skillful passes, and pick their spots to jump into the play as an extra forward on the attack. Dean never shied away from shooting the puck hard from the blue line, whereas I was content to send it along the boards and into the corners for our forwards to cycle. Whenever Dean moved up into the play I’d be there to rotate into his vacated spot. When I would slide to the ice skates first to block and oncoming shot, Dean would position himself near where the puck would likely deflect, ready to clear it from our zone. Dean would rack up the goals and points; I would take the penalties and hog ice time. After being an inseparable duo for eight years, there was no question we had each other’s back, no questions asked. On the ice we were like two sides of the same brain.

I have had this dream many times before. I know I am dreaming, and yet my body won’t wake from it. For some reason my mind feels the need to relive the memory.

Flash forward to high school: We made the varsity team as freshman, and although we were not on our squad’s top line, it was a given we would be there the next season. The coach, having known the same coaches we’d had as youngsters, knew better than to split us up and so we shared every shift, just as we had all those years before.

For this game, the crowd watching was the same medium-sized turnout we would customarily get, mostly the same parents, siblings, and girlfriends who turned up at every game to cheer us on. Not having a rink on campus – it was California, after all – we called the Culver City rink home, the same sheet of ice I had called home countless times before as in the peewee and junior leagues.

Flash to the early part of the second period: As I had done so many times before, I dropped to my knees, blocked a defenseman’s shot from the point, and watched the puck deflect off my pads and into the boards near the visiting team’s bench. Our center rushed to where the puck laid and forcefully coaxed it onto his stick, starting a mad dash up ice. The crowd, sensing the swing in momentum, got behind the team with supporting cheers and claps. I saw my team’s skaters all rushing up ice in an attempt to keep up with our speedy center. I climbed to my skates and behind me, heard our goalie, a senior: “Nice block. Now get going.” I bent forward to kick start my momentum and started skating.

As the play started developing our coach stood on our bench and screamed a number from his playbook: C-4. He wanted the center to trap the puck low along the boards until I could get into my spot along the blue line before setting up a play in the high slot. The wingers will cycle around until one can get an unobstructed shot from the slot and hopefully, either the center or the other winger will be in position to pass the puck to him.

I crossed the red line at center ice, still picking up speed as I rushed to pick up my open position. Ahead of me I saw Dean had taken up a spot at the top of the blue line, in the dead center. In a coaches game of X’s and O’s this was the correct place to be if one of your defensemen was slow getting back into the play. Should there be a turnover, Dean would be in the right place to slow a break up ice. As I drew nearer to where I should be I saw Dean intuitively slide over to his natural spot, knowing I am taking up the open ice he was vacating, as we had done countless times before.

Then something else happened.

Our center, running out of options along the boards while trapping the puck, saw me out of the corner of his face shield and decided to pass the puck out of the low end and along the boards towards me. Maybe he thought I’d be able to pass the puck around and open up the opposition’s tight defensive box that they had formed. Maybe he thought I’d shoot the puck towards the net and the goaltender will give up a sloppy rebound for one of our wingers to pounce on, or maybe he just thought the move would buy us a few more seconds to set up the coach’s play.

He freed the puck and moved it through what little open ice there was in the zone, straight towards me. I was still picking up speed, and was on course to intercept the puck just inside the blue line. But as I approached the puck with a full head of steam, the little voice inside my head, the voice of almost a decade’s worth of ice time and experience told me to shoot the puck on net. Shoot to score, not to pass or create a rebound. My normal shot – when I shot at all – was low to the ice and slow, perfect for a tip-in or redirection from a forward setting up at the top of the crease. But this time I could carry my speed into the shot so that it would travel much faster. This puck would get air. This puck was going to fly. Either it would blow by the goalie so fast he wouldn’t know what had happened until the puck was in the net and the goal light glowing red, or it would sail into the safety nets out of play above the rink. I wasn’t the type of player who shot the puck as a first instinct, but it didn’t take a shooter to know in this case it was the right thing to do. In the split second that I drew my stick back into a shooting stance, I looked at our center who’d sent me the puck and we were both clear what I was intending to do.

I met the puck just inside the blue line as I had hoped, and struck it with such speed that the force of the shot carried my body through the motion completely. Experienced shooters can time their stop to the striking of the puck, but I was going so fast, and was not used to shooting to score, that my body carried through the shot and I skated around in a u-shape, with my back to the action.

While turned away from the play I expected to hear the eruption of the crowd. I expected to hear the bullhorn signaling a goal. I expected to hear cheering and the sound of my teammates skating over for hi-fives and pats on the back.

Instead there was a moment of silence, followed by a collective groan from everybody in the arena. Everyone, that is, except me, while I finished the u-turn and spun around to see what was happening.

When I turned there was a body crumpled on the ice in the high slot. He was wearing the blue and white colors of our uniform. The referee’s repeated short, quick whistles rendered the play dead, and as I drew closer to the forming crowd, I saw who was wearing our uniform. It was Dean.

What I hadn’t seen in the instant I was teeing up the shot was Dean, darting from his position along the opposite side of the blue line towards the top of the slot, hoping for the high rebound my shot typically generated. It was a play we’d run hundreds of times: I shot the puck low to the ice, Dean moved up to the high slot for a long, bouncing rebound, while I moved over to take Dean’s previously vacated spot. If the puck came to Dean and he could shoot it, great; if not, he would move to my old spot and in the ensuing cycling of the puck to keep the play alive we switched places to revert to our natural positions.

That didn’t happen this time. Instead I released a rocket of a shot that struck Dean in the mid-side of his body as he rushed to take up his new spot. The shot never made it to the goaltender. Dean had absorbed its full force.

The crowd around Dean’s crumpled body was growing, now populated by members from both teams and referees who were trying to keep the teams at bay and nerves calmed. I tried to rush up to the center of things, all the while calling out for Dean, asking if he was okay. I pulled my helmet off and cast it carelessly to the ice. A referee skated to me and pushed at a few of us while saying give the injured player some space. I kept calling for Dean, but he wasn’t answering. Our coaching staff quickly appeared on the ice and went through the cursory motions of making sure he didn’t have any broken bones, a neck injury, or a back injury. Dean wasn’t moving. When they were certain his neck was okay they pried his helmet free and laid it on the ice next to him. I could see glimpses of Dean as he tried to suck in air. It was hard for him to breathe. He wasn’t looking at anything, just at the rafters above us, littered with banners of all the victorious teams that had called the Culver City Ice Arena home. Some of those were our teams. Dean gasped for air once more and the coaches signaled to the bench to bring out the stretcher.

The entire coaching staff very gingerly maneuvered Dean onto the stretcher, carefully easing his body this way and then that as if he were a brittle cookie about to crumble into pieces. Both teams remained on the ice, all silent while they watched. In the crowd, people looked on with open mouths while others just stared. A few pointed at me. Others held their hands up to their mouths, the tips of their fingers pointed up and joined together as they would be when praying. In unison the coaches counted three and hoisted the stretcher to their hips. Where Dean’s body had been on the ice I now saw droplets and small puddles of blood. I didn’t know what was happening.

I broke free of the corralled players and skated over to meet the procession leading Dean off the ice. His body was rigid but his head was turned to my side, and he coughed up blood between labored attempts to breathe. He wasn’t talking, and his faced showed the panic of a body in shock. It wouldn’t be until that night we’d learn he had ruptured his spleen. Normally there was padding to protect the area, but depending on the length of your skating stride the padding extending upward from the top of the pants could drop low enough to leave that area of the body vulnerable. It was a one in a million shot, and I had taken it.

“Dean. Dean. Are you okay? Talk to me. What’s happened?” I said as I met the stretcher. The procession continued past me. I took off one of my gloves and held up a hand to stop the group but they continued walking.

I turned to follow but was intercepted by our coach, who grabbed me by the elbow and pulled me out of the way.

“Oh my god, kid. What have you done? What have you done?”
_______________________________________________________________________________________________

It was the same doctor’s office as all the others. Drab. Neutral colors of paint on the walls. Weathered oak chairs in the waiting area that showed their age. Magazine subscriptions that were over six months old, covering subjects nobody here for an appointment should care about. Guns and Ammo. Pregnancy Today. Modern Bride. My mother sat in the chair beside me trying to read the Martha Washington biography paperback she’d brought with her, but the multitude of prescription medications in her system were keeping her in a haze that precluded concentration. I looked over the choices of magazines once more and chided myself for not bringing along my own reading materials or an iPod. I sighed, and reached for the copy of Modern Bride. Might as well see what sorts of Bridezillas were being bred these days.

I might have been three or four pages into the periodical when I was interrupted by the lady sitting across from me, a fake tanned 40-something with a bad hair color job and slightly bulging eyes. If it weren’t for her torpedo boob job she would be a complete loss.

“Are you here for a testicular cancer screening?” she asked. I looked up from the article on how to best match veil patterns to the floral arrangement closest to where the bride stands at the altar and looked at the woman, staring back at me with a “well?” look on her face. She looked a bit like Gail O’Grady but with more plastic surgery.

“Excuse me?”

“This is a clinic devoted to cancer screening and treatment. I looked at you and thought perhaps that’s what you were here for. You know the Mayo clinic found that cases of testicular cancer in men under 30 have risen fivefold, right?”

“Hadn’t heard that.”

She tapped her forefinger to her temple. “You never can be too sure,” she responded in one of those knowledge-is-power moments.

I made the hitchhiking sign towards my mother. “I am here for her. One of those ‘see how you’re doing’ checkups.”

My mother remained seated and unflinching despite the discussion having turned to her.

The woman looked her over. “Poor thing. Where is it?”

I leaned in, as if to shield my mother from having to hear it. “Ovarian,” I said in a hushed tone.

“That’s terrible!” the woman exclaimed. Then she turned to address my mother. “I’m so sorry to hear about it,” she told her. My mother smiled faintly and returned to her book.

“Don’t take it personally,” I told the woman, “it’s the drugs. It keeps her in a haze.”

The woman nodded. “I can only imagine.”

“What are you in for?” I asked.

She sighed and responded, “Breast cancer screening. Every woman’s worst fear.” Then she paused and added, “Although I am not trying to make light of your mother’s situation by any means.” She opened her undersized Coach purse stuffed to the gills with items and fished out a compact. As she examined the state of her afternoon makeup she continued: “I’m at that age where I have to come in every year and let them squeeze around the area while I hold my breath and hope to God the hormone-injected farm stock I buy at the store or the soft drinks and their five-syllable chemical combinations didn’t give me something.”

While she gave herself the once-over in her compact I snuck another look at her torpedo-shaped bust, partially hidden behind a European wrap style blouse that was tightly snug at the waistline. I wanted to ask her how they accurately do a breast cancer exam when more of you is silicone and saline than skin, but thought better of it.

The woman snapped the compact shut, momentarily startling my mother from her drug-induced haze. Depositing the compact into her purse, she fought with the clasp as she tried to squeeze everything back into the sausage-shaped handbag.

When she finished she looked back at me and smiled. “Gosh, I’ve been going on for so long and I haven’t even told you my name! They say Californians are rude when it comes to manners, but you know I just don’t buy it.”

“You don’t say,” I said as I went back to my magazine.

“Well, my name is Kathleen. If you are from around here you might recognize me. I used to be on the news.”

I looked up from my magazine and looked at the woman again, this time really concentrating on her eyes, her face, her hair. I even tried to imagine her five to ten years younger. But I couldn’t place her.

“Sorry, don’t recall,” I told her.

“Well, that’s okay. It was almost fifteen years ago. Good old KTLA news, that was what I called home.”

“So what happened? Retire from the biz?” I asked Kathleen.

“Heavens no! They retired me – traded me in for a younger, hotter field reporter. Just like my husband – he traded me in for a twentysomething. He wasn’t exactly the fountain of youth either,” she said, tacking on a nervous laugh at the end.

Oh yeah, she was coping real well. I quickly assumed the torpedo tits came soon after the two trade-ins occurred.

Our saving grace came in the form of the office nurse calling us to the examination room. After my mother was walked down and seated in the exam room the nurse closed the door and told me I could remain in the waiting room if I liked. Faced with the prospect of an impending conversation from Torpedo Tits about why men leave their wives for younger women, I told the nurse I’d be happy to wait quietly in the hall. She acquiesced but after scanning my mother’s file one more time told me to hang tight – the doctor would want to speak to me afterward.

Twenty minutes later I was summoned. I followed a different nurse down a hallway and past another exam room where Kathleen was seated, anxiously awaiting her yearly feel-up. We continued past another two doors and into the doctor’s office, where he was already seated behind an oversized mahogany desk whose every open spot was stuffed with books and papers. My mother was seated in one of the leathery reddish guest chairs in front of his desk. I slid into the other.

For a few months my mother had told me she would need me to come to one of her appointments, that I would need to talk to a doctor. She didn’t offer much information, and I thought of it as just another appointment where my chauffeuring skills would be required. With the different combinations of medicine my mother took she was a hazard to be behind the wheel.

“Thank you for coming in, son,” the doctor began. “I’m sure you know why we are all here today.”

I nodded. “Cancer.”

“Yes. Your mother’s ovarian cancer, once thought to be in remission, has made its way back over the past twelve to eighteen months. I am sure you have heard this before.”

He was right, I had. I’d heard it four or five years ago, when specialists had assured us the cancer screening had discovered the growths early enough to keep in check or send it into remission. I’d heard it three years ago, while my father was still alive, when my mother underwent chemotherapy treatment for a return visit the cancer had made to the same region. I’d heard about it two years ago, when the cancer was still holding on and though there wasn’t anything medically that could be done to eradicate it, we were told she could still lead a productive and happy life for as long as her body would hold out, though nobody could put an accurate time estimate to it. This song and dance had been sung and tapped out many times – most of them wrongly, a few of them right.

“Things have happened inside your mother’s body over the past year to make matters worse. The cancer has spread – metastasized – from what remains of her ovaries. It is now in her stomach, gall bladder, and pelvic area. The zombie-like state your mother has been in recently is a direct result of my aggressive approach to treating the metastization with medication.”

“So what is the prognosis?” I asked.

“I’m afraid there is no treatment, this is the end of the line,” he said with a grave tenor. “It is at a point where all we can do is wait it out with her. And be supportive.”

I looked over at my mother in her catatonic state. The meds had turned her into an unfeeling, static robot. Every prescription that was intended to slow the spread or ease a pain carried with it harsh side affects that rendered the body more unfeeling, more immobile.

“How long do you give her?”

The doctor slumped back into his chair. “It’s hard to say. When cancer is at this stage and so widespread it is not an exact science, no matter how cruel that irony may sound. I like to remain optimistic, so at most I think she has a year left.”

I placed a hand on my mother’s knee to let her know I was here, that I wasn’t going anywhere. Any feeling my mother had, an emotion of the situation wasn’t showing on her face, but she had to know, as in the past, that she had my sympathies.

“I will continue to treat her, and continue to prescribe medications to help ease the pain, but I am going to change the combinations so she is less lifeless and more, well…human.”

I nodded in agreement.

“I know you know she is sick, more so than she has been in the past, but that is not why I wanted to speak to you today,” the doctor said. “A while ago, a few months after your father’s passing, your mother and I spoke about the future, about what to do if the time came when she couldn’t make educated and moral decisions for herself. Decisions regarding her treatment and her daily routine. I suggested she name someone as her power of attorney. She did; you. From what I understand, you live at home with her and have the greatest amount of access to her on a daily basis. That is what she needs.”

I looked over at my mother, still motionless, as the doctor continued. “I don’t know if she ever took the steps to legally finalize a power of attorney contract, so I suggest you take it up with your family lawyer. And if not, then get yourself one, immediately. I am not going to offer false hope; her condition will not improve, and the sooner you are her power of attorney, the sooner you can make decisions in her best interest.”

I turned my chair to face my mother and held her hands. They were oily and clammy, with the rubbery feel of latex. I looked her square in her recessed eyes. “Is this what you want?” I asked. Her eyes darted in reaction to my voice, and for the briefest of moments she focused enough to nod in agreement.

“Okay, I will. Let’s go home now.”
_____________________________________________________________________________________

Mister Roberts had been our family’s lawyer for as long as I could remember. In dinner table conversation my father referred him to as “The Great Drafter” for drawing up all the documents related to living wills, living trusts, patent filings, and indemnifications. Mister Roberts was as much a money manager as he was a lawyer, and by extension of his duties as documents author he managed a lot of funds for my parents. For all his services he suffered repeated jabs from my father about the Mister Roberts movie starring Henry Fonda. I suppose it was a small thing to endure considering his hourly rate.

The appointment was brief as Mister Roberts had a large roster of clients (as did most Beverly Hills lawyers worth their own sod). I stepped into his office and took a seat while he shuffled through a folder containing all things Becker, a ledger of sorts with the history of all our dealings.

“Anything to drink, my boy? Coffee? Tea?”

I politely waved him off.

Once Mister Roberts found the items he was searching for, he clicked the intercom on his phone and asked for the person on the other end to come into his office.

“I cannot notarize any papers I draft so I will need another party in here. I hope it’s okay,” he told me.

I shrugged.

“Your mother signed the consent forms of her living will – the document that specifies her power of attorney and what decisions they are authorized to make – almost a year ago, so her attendance isn’t necessary.” Mister Roberts took a seat at the end of his desk and handed me a packet.

Behind us the door opened and a stuffy, rotund man walked in with a small briefcase.

“Mister Innes, Mister Becker. Mister Becker, Mister Innes.”

The man said something cordial and I nodded while I began reading the papers.

“Let me give you a cautionary word of advice,” Mister Roberts said as I read. “Having someone’s power of attorney isn’t merely a matter of signing your name on the “X.” It is an explicit agreement to take over someone’s life for them. You will be charged with making all their decisions – not just the ones you think you’ll be making as you now sit in this chair – but all decisions on just about everything. Appointments. Medications. Legal decisions. Money decisions. Billings. Payments. You are now the CEO of your mother. But more than that, you are now both a team, joined at the hip. Keep that in mind as things progress and you are called upon to make her decisions. You have to make these decisions as if you are living her life.”

With his Mont Blanc he lowered the papers I’d been reading so that I would be sure to hear what he was saying. “You have to be ready to do whatever it is she needs, no questions asked.” He stood up and walked around to the side of the room where Mr. Innes was readying his materials. “I have created countless living wills for my clients, and in the case of powers of attorney, the person taking on that responsibility must know and be ready to accept what they are in for. In your case, your will and wit are going to be tested. You will do things that seem inhumane in your eyes, despite being the right things to do. At times you will hate yourself, and knowing this in advance, I am sorry for what you will be put through. Make no mistake – these things don’t build character, they don’t force you to grow up; they reveal what you had inside all along. Heart of Darkness. Have you ever read that book? Conrad, I believe.”

I put the papers back on his desk. “No, but I’ve seen Apocalypse Now. Does that count?”

Mister Roberts smiled. “From what I know about you, from what your parents have shared through the years, I know you will do fine.”

I signed all the forms where needed, some in duplicate, some in triplicate, and the notary stamped, dated, and applied his signature wherever necessary. We shook hands and he left.

“One more thing,” Mister Roberts said, “about that doctor. You’ll have to go back to his office with this form.”

“What is it?”

“Termination policy, that’s the official term for what you and I would informally call ‘pulling the plug.’ It defines what level of incapacitation your mother will suffer before you have the authority to permanently halt any medical assistance. You see it already bears my signature. You will need her doctor to sign it, and then you will have to do the same.” He placed the form into a legal size manila envelope. “Once that is done return it here in person and we will have one other form signed and notarized in your presence. I will of course waive the fee for your return trip as it is an extension of this appointment.”

Mister Roberts handed me the envelope and I thanked him for his time. As we shook hands and parted ways he added, “Please give my love to your mother. Just because she is embarking upon her final chapter doesn’t mean we should stop pulling for her.”
__________________________________________________________________________________

Three days later I sat in the parking garage of the same doctor we’d seen a week prior. The ink was still fresh from his signature, a curvy tangle of L’s, N’s, and vowels. Beneath in the same black ink was my signature, above the typed words “power of attorney.” I read the document over and again, pausing with every comma, mumbling every clause and scenario that it spelled out. I must have done this a dozen times.

A hand rapped at my car window. I lowered it to find a fully uniformed security guard.

“Everything okay sir? Do you require any assistance?”

I shook my head and spoke slowly. “I had an appointment with one of the doctors upstairs. I’m just going over some papers he gave me.”

“I was just making sure. I’d seen you sitting there on my last two trips around the garage and thought maybe you were incapacitated.”

I shook the watch free of my shirtsleeve and checked the time. It had been nearly two hours since I’d descended from the doctor’s office.

“You can stay here for another hour, but after that the offices close and I’ll have to lock the mechanical gates. I just want you to know. Have a nice day.” The security officer returned to his cart and resumed his rounds.

I pushed the power window switch on the center console and watched the painted blue line on the cement of the handicapped spot I parked next to change from blue to gray behind the tint of my window. I took one last look at the form, its language so clear, its instruction so final. Slowly, I slid the Termination Policy form back into its manila envelope so as to not smudge the still wet ink, and fastened the brass clasps. The other signatures all meant we agreed it was the right thing to do. All it took to seal my mother’s death warrant was a name on a line, and I had signed it. But for those past two hours beneath the doctor’s office, I wasn’t in the parking garage at all. My mind was miles away, on a fresh sheet of ice with my head down and the voice of my coach ringing in my ears.

Oh my god, kid. What have you done?