Page 156 of The Prodigal Son

“Don’t answer that,” Caleb answers with a look of discomfort.

Meanwhile, I can’t keep my laughter in.

“What?” she asks with a shrug. “I was just as mad as you boys were. But that is not the point.” Waving her hand, she tries to maneuver the conversation back to the topic at hand. “I wantedyou all here to tell you I will be going up to the hospital. I’d like to make peace before he goes. Your decision is up to you, and I won’t be mad at you either way.”

“Okay, Mom,” Adam says, placing a hand on her shoulder. “I’ll go with you, so you’re not alone.”

“I’d like to go too,” Luke says next. “I think saying goodbye will give me some closure.”

Caleb nods. “As much as I’d like to knock his lights out, I think I’ll regret it if I don’t at least say goodbye.”

Everyone looks at me, and a tightness builds in my throat. I have nothing left to say to my father after what I told him at the house when he came here. I said my goodbye. But what if I don’t go, and I regret it? I don’t care about Truett Goode anymore, but he is still my dad. If I go to say one last goodbye, it would be more for me than for him.

“I’ll go,” I mumble. “To say goodbye.”

My mother gives me a tight smile while my brothers nod in unison. The air in the room is thick with tension, and I almost wish someone would crack a joke again to lighten it, but they don’t. Because sometimes, even the tough stuff needs to be felt.

My family and I all arrive at the hospital about an hour later. My mom leads the pack, walking with us behind her down the hall toward the room where the nurse told us to go.

The hospital brings back tough memories of when I visited Jensen here, and it makes me miss him. As soon as this is over, I’m going to rush home to him and let him wash away all the stress of this day with his mouth and his hands.

My mom presses the door to our father’s room open slowly, and we all file in together. The first thing I register is the soundof a machine beeping with the cadence of a heartbeat. Then we shuffle around his bed and I see my father lying unconscious with tubes and wires coming from his body.

From the moment I see him, I know it’s over. He won’t wake up from this. He’s never walking out of this hospital. He has the look of a man on the cusp of death.

It really shouldn’t hit me with a wave of emotion, but it does. Maybe deep down, I assumed my dad might change. I figured somewhere far down the road when Jensen and I are married and have children, my dad would come around. He’d apologize and become a changed man, and then we might have some semblance of a second chance.

It was a pipe dream all along, but I still hoped for it.

I look over at my mother to find her crying quietly as she stares at the man in the bed, even after everything he’s done to her. I have to remind myself that he was her husband. Her partner. The person she was meant to go through life with. And even if that didn’t work out the way she wanted, it probably still hurts to see him dying.

Even Adam has tears in his eyes, and I realize that all of this is heavier and more complicated than we expected. Most of the people in this room have at least once in their lives promised this man they would dance on his grave. But now…seeing him actually dying…is harder than we anticipated.

“He doesn’t deserve any of our forgiveness,” my mother says quietly with a sniffle. “But maybe…if we gave it to him anyway, we’d find some peace.”

Adam puts an arm around her. “Yeah, Mom. You’re right.”

“We deserve peace,” Caleb adds.

The five of us settle into the hospital room. We reminisce together on memories from our childhood—the good ones only. Our dad doesn’t wake up, but it’s like he’s still in the room with us. The kinder version of him. I like to imagine that somewherealong the way, we broke the cruel, hatred-filled man who was raised on spoonfuls of spite and bigotry. Somewhere in there was a man who loved his family and his community. I’ll mourn him, but I won’t mourn the version that used to treat us like he hated us and refused to accept us the way we were.

I don’t think even Truett wanted to be that version of himself. Not really. The power ruined him.

The long day stretches into night, and the entire time, we stay together as a family.

And sometime around three, the beeping stops.

We huddle around our mother as she weeps. A nurse comes in to call his time of death. And that’s it.

Just like that, it’s over. Three decades of fighting and animosity. Three decades of trying to make that man proud. Three decades of proving to him what a man I could be.

Losing a parent is strange. It feels like flying from the nest without wanting to. Like having a pair of wings slapped on my back and being shoved into adulthood. Which is strange for someone like me who has lived without his parents for over a decade.

But now that Truett is gone, I feel a different type of freedom. And I’m not sure I want it. Because now I have to actually prove what I can do. Now, I’m a man without a father, and the gauntlet has been passed.

Adam, Caleb, Luke, and I hug each other tightly in a huddle and I know they feel it too. We no longer exist in his shadow. Our existence is no longer defined by trying to prove him wrong. We are finally at liberty to be the men we want to be.

After taking my mother home and making sure she’s settled, I head home to Jensen. He’s asleep on the couch when I arrive as if he couldn’t even go to bed without me. I crawl into his arms sometime around daybreak.

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