If my grandfather hadn\u2019t uncharacteristically mentioned fatigue on the horse ride back from surveying the new fence beyond the hill, if he hadn\u2019t lain down on the porch bench and covered his face with his hat, if my uncle hadn\u2019t asked what he thought of the new calf and, when he didn\u2019t answer, hadn\u2019t noticed that my grandfather wasn\u2019t snoring as usual and hadn\u2019t uncovered grandpa\u2019s face and seen his eyes were glazed and the right side of his mouth pulled just a little and if my other uncle hadn\u2019t come to visit in the new truck with the tires that could cross the creek even when it was running high and covering the muddied dirt road and if the brothers hadn\u2019t carried their father into the backseat against my grandmother\u2019s wishes and driven past the village clinic and all the way to the city my grandfather avoided and if nobody had thought to call their sisters, and if my aunts hadn\u2019t met them at the hospital, and if my grandfather\u2019s many children hadn\u2019t insisted that everything that could be done be done because he was beloved and they couldn\u2019t fathom a world without him in it and if they hadn\u2019t told the doctors that yes, they understood, but they needed him to be okay and any chance is a chance and if they hadn\u2019t spent hours at his bedside, weeks, months, counting every sigh or groan or twitch as a sign, a message, an acknowledgement, and if they had listened to my grandmother when she said no tracheotomy and no gastrostomy and no more no more no more, then maybe instead of spending the last seven months of his life amidst the bustle of the city, bathed by daughters, fed by sons, my grandfather would have ended his days on the hard wooden bench of the farmhouse porch where, for most of his life, he\u2019d lain down, one knee propped, hat over his head, to rest his eyes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If my uncles hadn\u2019t carried their father into the backseat against my grandmother\u2019s wishes and driven past the village clinic and all the way to the city my grandfather avoided and if my grandfather\u2019s many children hadn\u2019t insisted that everything that could be done be done because he was beloved and they couldn\u2019t fathom a world without him in it and if they hadn\u2019t told the doctors that yes, they understood, but they needed him to be okay<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19774,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","writer-amy-marques"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19171"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19775,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19171\/revisions\/19775"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}