It was Christmas Day, 2021. My children were with their father and his family. I was sitting in the hospital beside my dying father. It is a different kind of loneliness when you realize that you are the only one showing up to say goodbye to someone who is already gone. Physically, my father was shriveled up in his hospital bed –strapped down so that he would not fall out. The nurse said he kept trying to get up to leave because he had to be at my house (about two hours away). He did not know where he was or why. The dementia had gotten so severe that the nursing staff could not reason with him. That was the first day he had arrived, but by the time I arrived on the second day…his eyes were closed and they never opened again. He would cry out in pain as his body continued to shutdown. I talked to him. I held his hand. I told him it was okay to let go. We watched the nature channel. I played 50’s music for him. I knew he would never open his eyes. I knew he was letting go, but I stayed anyway. No one should have to die alone. I realized that. I also realized that in many ways, he had lived the last year relatively alone. Even with people around him, he was alone. And that may be the last lesson my father was to share with me. He used to say that his health problems were the result of too many birthdays, but at the end…no one was there to “celebrate” all those years…to celebrate a life well-lived. I left the hospital with emotions that I could not explain and with no one that I could possibly share those feelings. I realized that I do not want to die alone, but even more than that, I do not want to live my life alone.