My mother called to tell me that my father had died in the hospital. I was devastated that I had not been given the chance to say goodbye, but her next words felt unusually cold. She described him as a good father but a terrible husband, then claimed she had skipped both his funeral and every visit to his grave.
Something about her story never felt right.
Months later, I searched public records and finally located the cemetery where he was supposedly buried. I drove there alone, carrying flowers and rehearsing everything I wished I had told him. But when I reached the plot number, there was no headstone bearing my father’s name.
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