I wanted to scream at that nurse. She told us he’d die any minute, but my dad continued to gurgle for 377 more minutes. For the first 38, we watched every rattling breath he took, heard the wet sound from his chest and pushing through his throat. I held my sister Meryl’s hand and squeezed every time he choked or stopped breathing, feeling her fingers clench back, cold and shaking in mine. Flushed faces, swollen eyes, buried faces. 

As the minutes staggered on, my dad’s wife Nancy shifted her weight and leaned heavily against the metal rail of the medical bed. Meryl and I gazed away from him, and then everyone started to get up and move around. At first, we darted in quick bursts, like when I hurried to the bathroom to grab hand towels for everyone. Then we slowed down, made sandwiches, walked to the car. The man seemed in no hurry. 

Eventually, after about 210 minutes of drifting in and out of the bedroom, we all ended up back in the living room for dinner. My husband Josh had gone out and picked up the pizzas, ordered by my dad’s longtime military friend, whom we all just called “Gooch.” They’d served together overseas almost 40 years ago and still talked every Arkansas and Tennessee game.

Somehow, Nancy had found enough chairs for all eight of us, plus the hospice nurse who stopped in a couple more times. Different conversations were going, and I sat in the chair on my dad’s right. I sank into the recliner’s extra-large plushness, feeling the soft fabric against my arms as I opened The New York Times puzzle app on my phone. After some time, question 14 down stumped me, and I turned to my husband.

“Hey, Josh, what do you think this answer is? ‘Opposite of “me too,” sort of.’ Four letters: N, blank, blank, blank, I?” I held out my phone, arm shaking from clenching so damn long, so he could see.

“Huh, let me think,” he said, his head bent in concentration.

“Nor I,” my stepsister Rebecca called from across the room, and she lowered her phone in waiting. I typed the phrase in and hit “check word.” All the letters turned blue — correct answer. The eight of us cheered and laughed. After a few moments of silence, Nancy said, “Do another one.” I read the next clue, and we threw words at each other until one sparked an answer in someone. They called it out, I checked, and either way, we laughed.

After a few answers, I thought for sure one or more people would get bored, and we’d quit. But I kept saying the clues, and people kept answering. Though some of us drifted in and out of the conversation, there was an unspoken understanding that we had to finish the game. The app threw digital confetti when I put in the last answer at 1 hour, 18 minutes, and for a while we just sat there, sharing this small win. Around 9 p.m., we adult kids left Nancy’s house, and an hour and a half later, my dad left, too.

Author’s note: Since writing this ‘Slice of Death’ essay, I had the pleasure of encountering another writer’s experience with games after losing her father. You can read that free story, “What Did You Get It In?” by Jessica Gentile, here.