I was eighty-eight years old, sleeping in a motel room off the interstate, the kind with a flickering ice machine outside my window.
The graduation was Saturday. My granddaughter's. I drove twelve hours to see her walk.
My wife Eleanor couldn't come. She was in the hospital three blocks from this motel. Heart failure, they said. Stable for now.
Every morning I'd drive over, get my parking validation ticket stamped, sit with her until the nurse shooed me out for rounds.
The motel room had a picture of a sailboat over the bed. It was the same room my son and I stayed in twenty years ago, when we moved her into college.
I stuck the validation tickets in my shirt pocket. Each one was a proof I was still here, still showing up.
On Sunday, after the ceremony, I was packing up. I found three validation tickets in my pocket. I almost threw them out.
But I kept one. I don't know why. Maybe because it's the only thing I have that proves I was in two places at once. Her graduation. Her hospital bed. Both of them needing me.