My mother tells me my father cries every time they bring him food. There is a virus going around, she tells me. Yes, I say, and maybe he can't say he's sick. I imagine my father sitting in a flood of tears, his body erect, trying to look dignified.

I turn on the six o'clock news and see all kinds of Californians elating about having so much water. The camera focuses on flowers growing wildly, spreading their joy. A farmer is interviewed. This year, he says, he doesn't have to worry. He looks reborn. An aging hippie stands next to a river cheering with waves. It's a good life, he sighs. Hey, someone has to live here, he grins into the camera.

I pick up the phone and call my mother. She always calls me on Sunday morning. I startle her. She sounds tired. I check the time. Was she sleeping? No, but it's been a long day, she says. Your father won't eat, she reports. And he doesn't have a virus. She was called in to sign some papers so he could be fed through a tube.

When they moved him to a room to insert the feeding tube, my father who-never-raised-his-voice SCREAMED SO LOUD he terrorized the residents. Even The Nurse Who Smiles-No-Matter-What looked up from her station. They had to restrain him.

The other day, my mother says, they found him out in the parking lot. He got into someone's car. They don't know how he got out. He wants out, I say. It won't be long now, she replies and says she'll call me Sunday­if not sooner.

I flash back to a scene when he could still sit in his chair at home with my mother. The doctor had given him a drug so he would not dig his arm. He did not dig but he hallucinated. He went into his mind to some faraway place, to the place of the scream I think now. He called me over to his chair to tell me something. "They're going to come and take me away. They're going to take me out West," he continued. His face grew tense. He was getting angry. "I don't want to go. When the time comes, that's what they'll try to do, I'm telling you," he grumbled.