My father died when I was 6. You knew that, right? Yeah. He had Huntington's Disease. It's-- destroys portions of the brain, affects muscle control, leads to dementia. It's just a nasty disease. It's genetic. It terrified my mother that I might have it, so they ran tests on me when I was a kid, but I came up clean. ⏎ My father fell very ill when I was 4 or 5. He spent a lot of time in the hospital. My-- My mother would tell me so many stories about my father. She would talk about him all the time. I knew about his personality, how he treated people. I even knew how he liked his steaks cooked-- medium rare. Just like you. ⏎ I knew things about my father. I had a lot of information. It's because people would tell me these things. They would paint this picture of my father for me, and I always pretended that was who I saw, too, who I remembered, but it was a lie. ⏎ In truth, I only have one real, actual memory of my father. It must've been right before he died. My mother would take me to the hospital to visit him, and I remember the smell in there, the chemicals. It was as if they use up every single cleaning product they could find in a 50-mile radius... like they didn't want you smelling the sick people. Oh, there was this stench of Lysol and bleach. You could just feel it coating your lungs. ⏎ Anyway, there, lying on the bed, is my father. He's all-- He's all twisted up. And my mom, she puts me on her lap. She's sitting on the bed next to him so I can get a good look at him... but really he just scares me... and he's looking right at me... but I can't even be sure that he knows who I am. And your grandmother is talking, trying to be cheerful, you know, as she does, but the only thing I could remember is him breathing. Oh, th-- this-- this rattling sound, like if you were shaking an empty spray-paint can. Like there was nothing in him. ⏎ Anyway... that is the only real memory that I have of my father. I don't want you to think of me the way I was last night. I don't want that to be the memory you have of me when I'm gone.🏁

My father died when I was 6. You knew that, right? Yeah. He had Huntington's Disease. It's-- destroys portions of the brain, affects muscle control, leads to dementia. It's just a nasty disease. It's genetic. It terrified my mother that I might have it, so they ran tests on me when I was a kid, but I came up clean. ⏎ My father fell very ill when I was 4 or 5. He spent a lot of time in the hospital. My-- My mother would tell me so many stories about my father. She would talk about him all the time. I knew about his personality, how he treated people. I even knew how he liked his steaks cooked-- medium rare. Just like you. ⏎ I knew things about my father. I had a lot of information. It's because people would tell me these things. They would paint this picture of my father for me, and I always pretended that was who I saw, too, who I remembered, but it was a lie. ⏎ In truth, I only have one real, actual memory of my father. It must've been right before he died. My mother would take me to the hospital to visit him, and I remember the smell in there, the chemicals. It was as if they use up every single cleaning product they could find in a 50-mile radius... like they didn't want you smelling the sick people. Oh, there was this stench of Lysol and bleach. You could just feel it coating your lungs. ⏎ Anyway, there, lying on the bed, is my father. He's all-- He's all twisted up. And my mom, she puts me on her lap. She's sitting on the bed next to him so I can get a good look at him... but really he just scares me... and he's looking right at me... but I can't even be sure that he knows who I am. And your grandmother is talking, trying to be cheerful, you know, as she does, but the only thing I could remember is him breathing. Oh, th-- this-- this rattling sound, like if you were shaking an empty spray-paint can. Like there was nothing in him. ⏎ Anyway... that is the only real memory that I have of my father. I don't want you to think of me the way I was last night. I don't want that to be the memory you have of me when I'm gone.🏁