“Someday” arrived on a drizzling cold Saturday afternoon as I idled in the back of a long line of slow moving cars, each with blinkers on, heading for the same destination at the top of the hill where my dad always said he would be laid to rest someday.

The call we all dread but expect someday came four weeks earlier. Dad had fallen. He was unconscious before he hit the ground and his head smacked the cement unimpeded, prompting bleeding in the brain. At the trauma center surgeons told my siblings on site, and me on the phone a thousand miles away, that we had five minutes to decide whether or not to operate.

Odds were slim that dad would survive an operation, given other health issues. And we knew dad would rather be eaten by piranhas than to endure a lengthy term of physical impairment. We knew his end of life directives, so we elected no surgery. We would let this injury run its course, whatever channels it might carve.

Dad made a remarkable recovery in just a couple of days. My wife, daughter and I transferred him to a rehab center in our own car, and we returned to North Carolina. Dad improved steadily before I noticed on my daily phone call that he was very confused. He quickly deteriorated. I returned to Wisconsin and two weeks later dad died.

I was at his beside, listening to his labored breathing, urging the hospice nurse to administer morphine every hour as allowed, praying for grace and dignity and asking God to make dad’s final hours as few as possible.

His last breath was no different from any of the previous 100. But his body decided that last one was enough, and then it quit, signaling the end with a profound silence that rang through the room like a gong. My sister and I looked at each other and knew it was over.

It’s not easy to die in our system. Too many economic incentives are in play to let an old man pass in peace. A well insured patient at the end of life becomes a virtual money bladder into which every medical discipline sticks a straw to suck out their own sustenance.

I’ll write more on this later, but it seems less “health care” than it is “wealth share.” Or, in the case of the surviving spouse, or heirs or debtors, “wealth pare.”

Dad fell a second time when he was at rehab. Although we had determined the previous week we would not allow surgery or heroic measures just to keep dad breathing, attendants rushed him to the local emergency room, then back to the trauma center in the capital city. There doctors examined and tested him again, and a bevy of very kind, soft spoken palliative care doctors and interns explained options, and convinced dad’s children to admit him to palliative care at their hospital. When their straw was sated, they said he had to go back to the nursing center, under what would become hospice care.

There he spent his final week on this side of the veil as his body slowly shut down. It was a privilege to be there. It was a privilege to deliver the eulogy. It was a privilege to be known for 50 years as “Marv’s helper” and for all of my life, past and future, to be known as “Marv’s son.”

I have some trophies on my shelf, some papers in frames. But my proudest moments came from dad recognizing my hard work, whether it was splitting wood for the furnace that heated our Wisconsin farmhouse, or bringing home a good report card, or giving him a grandson. My worst moments were enduring his disapproval.

Dad was 86. His kidneys were bad, his heart weak. We always knew that someday we would lose him. But no matter how long you anticipate the final event, when someday arrives, it’s always a surprise, and you’re never ready.