Your father had been cooking for himself since your mother passed. It was a point of pride. You had noticed the old food in the refrigerator, the stove left on twice. You needed to say something but you did not know how to say it without taking away the one thing he was most holding onto.

Your uncle called at noon every day. You were in the middle of a conversation with the discharge coordinator when he called back a second time. You answered. Four minutes later you returned to find the coordinator had been pulled away. You waited twenty minutes to resume a conversation that had already taken three attempts to complete. He had asked how your father was doing.

Your siblings were asking questions about things you had already addressed in your updates, in ways that suggested they had received a version of your update rather than the actual one. When you asked, your older brother admitted he had been simplifying your updates before forwarding them because he thought they were worrying people unnecessarily. He had been doing this for eight weeks. Your sister had made a significant travel decision based on substantially incomplete information.

Every family has one. The person who knows which pharmacy fills the prescriptions, which doctor said what at the last appointment, and whether the home health aide is coming Tuesday or Wednesday this week.