The Cardinal’s Promise

I’ve spent my life and recovery being there for families and now am working in hospice, walking alongside families as they faced the final chapter of someone they loved. I had sat with sons and daughters, husbands and wives, parents and siblings. I had helped people have the conversations they did not want to have but needed to have.

I had been present for other families in some of the most sacred and painful moments of their lives.

And then, when it was my own father, I missed it.

I missed his bedside.

I missed the final goodbye.

That is a truth I live with.

It does not erase the years I loved him. It does not erase the care, the calls, the visits, the history, or the bond between us. But it is still true. I was not there at the moment I wish I had been there most.

That regret became part of me.

And eventually, it became part of this book.