This story appeared in the September/October 2020 of Discover magazine as "The Mourning Mind" We hope you’ll subscribe to Discover and help support science journalism at a time when it’s needed the most.
It was a crisp night in June, the sky bright from the light of the full moon. I stopped at a gas station to fuel up before heading to the hospital to see my father. Three months after heart surgery, his newly replaced valve had begun driving bacteria into his brain, causing multiple strokes. He was dying.
Standing at the pump, I thought about how he would never visit our new home. How we would never dance together again. I paid for my gas, got back in the car and drove out of the gas station — with the nozzle still lodged in my tank.
When I stopped the car, an onlooker who had watched the nozzle ...
