Five tiny tales and reflections float to the surface of my mind when I wander back in time to an experience we will all share at some point.

1. So many of our days go by with nary a memory made. The movie “Groundhog Day” is a cult classic for a reason. And then there are the days that punch your guts and change your structure. You don’t know when they’re coming or what they’ll be. And nobody tells you of their existence when you’re young. One moment, you’re traipsing along, and the next, your future is irretrievably changed. And all you can do is find your footing when they come.

2. The death of a parent is one of those days. I write this two decades to the day my father died on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend in 2006. Even now, my memories of that warm spring day are vivid. I was scuffling along Section 16, enjoying the early-morning sunshine and immersed in a thing I used to do on hikes: silently commune with loved ones I’d lost, which was a much shorter list then and mostly consisted of my maternal grandparents. I never knew my dad’s parents.

The cadence of my steps lulled me into a meditative state, and I’d say hello to grandma and grandad and have silent conversations, asking how they were, telling them I missed them, seeking advice. But that day, I did something surprising and unexpected: I included my father when I said my hellos. I don’t know why. He wasn’t sick, though he was 87 and not in the greatest health. The thought of him dying didn’t devastate me. I almost wanted it for him, as he wasn’t a very happy man for the last 15 years of his life. His bipolar disorder sank him into a pit of severe depression, and he made it clear he was still around despite his wish not to be. Nothing could lift him out of the murk, despite our best efforts.

He stopped leaving the house, stopped swimming his daily laps at the Y, stopped showering, stopped the long-winded chatter he’d been famous for when I was a kid. He slept, read, watched TV, and smoked and ate as much sugar as he could get away with before my mom intervened, scared he’d lose a limb after being diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes.

3. After my sister-in-law’s phone call alerted me that he was unconscious in the hospital, I spent the day there with my mom and brother. I knew he wouldn’t go home again. My mom did not. She spent the hours in denial, knitting while telling the nurses his color looked better and his oxygen level seemed to be improving. I knew the nurses also knew he wouldn’t go home. One of them encouraged us to each spend a little time alone with him, essentially to say our goodbyes. I stood at the side of his bed, gazing at his still body, and thought about the vast arroyo of emotional distance between us. It was hard to connect after he disappeared into the black hole of depression. And, honestly, even before that, too. For the first time, I noticed we had the same hands. I told him it was OK to go. And that we’d miss him.

4. He never woke after having what was likely a heart attack that morning. Late in the afternoon, we watched, somewhat confused, as his right hand floated off the hospital bed and stretched, palm face up, toward the upper right-hand corner of the room, as though reaching for someone. The nurse blamed it on the morphine, but I believed then and now that he was transitioning from this life to whatever comes next. And perhaps someone was there to greet and accompany him, maybe his mother, who died when he was 16, almost three-quarters of a century earlier.

5. My dad has regularly appeared in my dreams through the years, though not as much these days. Mostly, he’s a side character, hovering in the background or even off-screen, but my dream self knows he’s there. Sometimes he’s silent, other times he offers a word or two. But there’s one dream I’ll never forget that came a couple of years after his death and felt like a true visitation. I hesitate to call it a dream. It was more of a liminal state, where you feel caught between wakefulness and sleep. In it, I was on the phone with him. I could hear his voice, sounding exactly like him, but from very far away, like he was calling internationally from the great beyond. I asked how he was. He said pretty good, which was a surprising answer considering how not pretty good he had been in life. I asked if I’d see him soon, and he said oh no, not for a long time, which made me forlorn, but also relieved. I wasn’t ready to depart my human existence quite yet. I said goodbye, and this time he said goodbye back.