Chapter 15 — THE FORM SHE WOULDN'T SIGN

Paula drafted the consent on the twenty-sixth of January.

It is two pages. In it, a parent nominates a specific person as guardian of her children in the event of her death or incapacity, and states her reasons, and signs in front of a notary and two witnesses.

It is the single most powerful document in this entire story.

A judge is not bound by it. But a judge who has one from a fit parent, with reasons written out in her own words, is looking at a very different file than a judge who does not.

I took it to St. Brendan's on the twenty-seventh.

I did not ambush her with it. I told her on the phone the day before that I was bringing it.

She was propped up. She was having a good afternoon, which by then meant she was awake for about forty minutes at a stretch.

She read all of it. It took her a long time.

Then she put it face down on the blanket.

"No."

I said, "Sarah, in two weeks—"

"I know what happens in two weeks."

"Then—"

"Dad." She had almost no voice by then and she used it anyway. "Sit down."

I sat down.

"In 2005 my mother had eleven days left and she was on a ventilator and she was awake for some of it and you sat in a corridor with a doctor and you signed a paper that said stop."

"Sarah—"

"I was seventeen. I came up the stairs and you were in the corridor with a pen." She was breathing badly. "And I said what is that and you said it's what she wanted and I said *ask her* and you said she can't answer and I said then how do you know."

She stopped.

"And you said, because I know her."

The room was very quiet.

"That's the whole thing," Sarah said. "That's the entire thing. My father decided he knew what my mother wanted, and he signed it, and she was dead in four days, and I never got to ask her."

I said, "Do you want to know what the paper was?"

"I know what the paper was. It was a DNR."

"That's not—"

"Don't." She lifted a hand about two inches off the blanket, which was as far as she could lift it. "Don't tell me you were right. I've had twenty years of people telling me you were right. Renee tells me you were right. My husband told me you were right, before he left. I don't care whether you were right."

"Then what do you care about?"

And my daughter said:

"That you decided."

She turned her head to the window.

"And now you want me to sign a paper that says you get to decide about my kids. And you don't see it. You genuinely don't see it."

I sat in that chair for a long time.

Then I said the only true thing I had.

"You're right that I decided," I said. "I want to correct one fact and then I'll go."

"Dad—"

"Your mother wrote it down."

Sarah turned her head back.

"What?"

"In February of 2005, eight months before, your mother sat at the kitchen table and filled out an advance directive and had it notarised at the bank and put it in the fire box in the basement. I did not decide anything in that corridor. I executed a document that your mother wrote in her own hand, and the reason I never told you is that you were seventeen and you were screaming at me and I thought that if I said *she wrote it down* you would think I was making it up to win."

Sarah did not say anything.

"And then a year went by," I said, "and then two, and then twenty, and there is no day in there where I could have called you and opened with that."

She said, very quietly, "Where is it."

"In the fire box. In the basement. It has been in the fire box for twenty-one years."