What is your father’s middle name?
In which city was your father born?
Where has he been since 1985?
During which year did he get married for the second time?
The third?
The fourth?
When were you ten?
Who wrote the paperback that stayed after he left?
How many times has he been arrested?
Is your father’s middle name Lloyd, or was your father’s middle name Lloyd?
When was the first time his fifth wife tweeted he was dying?
If his kidneys fail and you have his nose, will your kidneys fail?
Does he remember the city in which you were born?
Will he die with a mustache?
He gave you his nose, shouldn’t you give him a kidney?
What is Paracentesis?
What were the last words you spoke to your father?
How much time should you spend mourning a stranger?
When the news hits Facebook, how many people will Like it?
When your father is truly dead, whose face will you see in the mirror?
Bridgette Shade’s favorite book is Charlotte’s Web. She aims, like Charlotte, to be a good friend and a good writer. She teaches at the University of Pittsburgh and runs The Writers Collective, an online writing course community. Say hello at www.bridgetteshade.com
Credit: Flickr Creative Commons/Sergiy Galyonkin
I love the way that you’ve made commonplace questions we get asked every day into something moving. You tell the reader so much just through questions. Simple but elegant.
What an incredibly moving piece.