In season 3 of Grey’s Anatomy there is an episode called “Six Days, Part 2.”  In this episode, George’s dad dies.  I wasn’t a fan of the show until long after this episode aired; however, when I did see it for the first time, I wept.

Tonight, my mom and I were watching…you guessed it, Grey’s.  It’s one of my favorite shows and it’s like comfort food for my brain.  I’ve been guzzling down episode after episode in the last week.  I watched season 1 in two days and am over halfway through season 2.  Tonight, the last episode we watched was episode 15, “Break On Through.”

During the first few minutes, Meredith comes across a lonely old woman calling out for her husband.  The woman is having trouble breathing so Meredith intubates her.  She finds out within minutes that the woman is a hospice patient — she has end stage COPD.

My breath caught a little in my chest and my eyes began to sting.  I looked over at my mother to gauge her reaction.  I was trying to determine if it would be best to skip to the next episode, to not pick the scab.

The look on my mom’s face was a pained one, but not nearly as pained as I’ve seen it in the past.  It was a face remembering an incredible sadness, not a face crumpled with agony.  Later on during the episode, when Meredith had to remove the tube and allow the old woman to die, I asked my mom if she wanted to skip it, if she wanted to fast forward.

I was asking for my own sake more than hers.  When I saw the woman laying there, the tube taped to her cheeks, her face lax with sedative and her family gathered around her… I couldn’t help but think about the night my dad died.

It made me remember so much I’d thought I’d forgotten.  I ate Taco Bell with David that night.  The show about the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders was on the television in my dad’s hospital room.  My cousin screamed, demanding that they “do something” for my father.  David told me it was too much for him to see my dad like that.  It was too much for me to bear alone, I thought.  But one memory escapes me that never does — I can’t remember what I was wearing, as I almost always do.  I remember what I wore to his funeral, even the shoes.  I remember the last thing my father said to me, too.  It wasn’t a significant sentence.  No words of wisdom, no declaration of love.  It was a joke.  Because we didn’t know it was the last time.  You never know it’s the last time.  And even if you do, what on earth would you say?  Do any of us really have the secret to a good life to impart to someone else?  I know I don’t, so I would probably just tell a joke, too.

Meredith cries after she calls the woman’s time of death.  And I cried.  My mom cried, too.  Silently reliving that December night in 2006.  Hard to believe that this Christmas will mark 4 years.

In the episode where George loses his dad, Cristina comes to him and says, “There’s a club. The Dead Dads Club. And you can’t be in it until you’re in it. You can try to understand, you can sympathize. But until you feel that loss… My dad died when I was nine. George, I’m really sorry you had to join the club.”

George tells her, “I… I don’t know how to exist in a world where my dad doesn’t.”

To which she replies, “Yeah, that never really changes.”

She’s so right.  It never does.