Gather

When I got home from this morning's broadcast, there was a message on my answering machine.
That means that someone called between 6:30 and 9:30 in the morning. Bad sign.

It was my grandmother's pastor. My grandmother is not well and she wants to gather the family.
Her youngest son is coming to pick me up in an couple of hours and I hope we return tonight, but I won't know until we get there.
Her oldest son has been missing for weeks, off on the latest in a career of drunken binges, and my dying grandmother is asking me to find him. I can do it, but I'm not sure I can handle what I find.
We are going to have a lot of work to do, and the last thing I need is my soggy, pathetic father fucking everything up with his alcoholic despair and destruction.
I think he's dead and lying on the floor of a rental shack somewhere, and I don't feel like dealing with that either.

Anyway, there's always the chance of another false alarm. There have been several of those already- in 1990, her doctor gave my grannie about a year to live, since her heart,kidneys and lungs were kaput, diabetes and cigarettes being the main culprits.
Earlier this year, my brother used his vacation time to fly home for just such an event.
I imagine he'll be flying home again soon.

It could be a false alarm.

She only had a year left in 1990.

That was seventeen years ago.

Seventeen years.

Time grows short and I must go no. I hope to see you soon.