A month before my father died, I stayed with him at my childhood home so my mother could leave town for a family wedding. On the first night, as I slept on the floor beside his bed, he threw a pillow at my face.

I sprang up, thinking he needed help. But my father, propped up on an elbow, grinned in the green glow of his clock radio.

“Abu!”

“You were snoring.”

“What?”

“I blame your mother. You should be sleeping at home beside your wife where you belong.” He switched on the bedside lamp. “Forget your mother’s nonsense. All she does is worry.”

My father looked healthy enough, especially at night when shadows filled in the creases at his eyes and mouth. Company would drop by and, fooled by his wisecracks and easy laughter, leave convinced he was just fine. Only my mother knew the truth, and because she trusted me, I did too—the tempests churning in his belly, the withering of his limbs. But when she declined invitations to dinner parties or a Qur’an khaani, friends felt spurned, believing she believed she was better than them. Invitations, even phone calls, dwindled.

“I’m glad she went to the wedding,” I said.

“Me too. I’m enjoying this break. Promise me you won’t nag me like she does.”

“Abu, you need to sleep. ” 

“Didn’t I just ask you to not nag?” He clucked his tongue and turned on the radio.

I switched off the light, then kissed the top of his head, like I used to do when I was a toddler. Ever since the doctors had confirmed the cancer, I’d started the habit again. Nothing else seemed to calm him like this did.

“Tipu, you need to strive for what is eternal.”

I stopped myself from saying, You’ve told me this before. I had come to know what he was really talking about—that grandson my wife and I had not yet succeeded in giving him. Ten years of trying had taught me that having a child wasn’t inevitable. As a father, he could predict a haunting set of sorrows in my future, and his veneer of acceptance masked his own deepening anguish. At first, he talked about bridges—how a man needed a son to complete one. Later, as death approached, he talked about eternity.

Once again, I responded with silence.

We eased back into our beds. For a year I’d had dreams in which he died. Always, I was present at his side. Our closeness on this particular night frightened me.

“Eternity has its own calendar,” he said.

The faceless child took shape in the darkness.

“Please, let’s sleep.” What I wanted to say was, I’m sorry, Abu.

He jolted up. “Let’s call your mother!”

“What?”

“You heard me. Let’s call her.”

“It’s an hour later in Michigan,” I said. “Let her sleep.”

“Give me the phone!”

I wondered if these antics of his were why my mom, much younger than my father, had come to look so haggard and old.

“The mehndi is tonight,” he said. “You know she loves to sing.”

It felt like a lifetime ago when my mother last sang.

As I was about to hand it to my father, the phone rang serendipitously.

“Ammi?”

“Tipu!” 

“What’s wrong?” I shouted.

Before she could answer, my father exclaimed, “She’s fine.”

“I miss you both so much,” she said. “But I’m happy I came.”

“We are too, Ammi.”

“How’s Abu?”

He stared at me with his smug smile.

“He’s his usual self. Keeping me awake.”

“Of course he is,” she laughed. Beyond her voice, I heard singing and the thudding of a dholak. “Okay, get some sleep. Call me if you need anything.”

“I will.”

“I told you she’s fine,” my father said, turning off the radio. “Now let’s all rest.”

I shut my eyes and let my body sink more deeply into the mattress of folded-up blankets. But my mind raced.

He is still alive, still alive, alive.

At some point, I felt as if my body was suspended upon a bridge made of light—my father holding up one end of the radiance, my mother the other. Then I began searching the darkness for that phantom baby, that elusive passageway into eternity. But I couldn’t conjure even its silhouette.

Soon my father’s breathing grew labored, and I understood that all of us—he and I and every person in the world—had one less day left in our lives. In the morning, I’d bring him tea and ask him about eternity. He’d pretend he didn’t know what I meant. To humor him, I’d change the subject, then stir honey into my own cup.

A month later, stunned by it all, I’d quit sweetening my tea.