Sonny and Ty in 2011 This summer, after Lou’s mother suffered a serious heart attack, my father-in-law was able to embrace her after she was extubated and lucid again. “We did good, right?” I heard her say through her loving tears, foreheads pressed together. “Yeah. We did good. The kids are good. We did good.” At the end of this crazy, beautiful, life, a mother just wants to know that she did good. A father wants to know that his kids are okay. Facing their own inevitable sunset, it’s all they cared to validate. That they were good parents. The kids are alright. The last conversation I had with my father-in-law, Sonny, was about Ty. We were in the hospital visiting mom, and he was so upset watching her sleep in the hospital bed, knowing how uncomfortable she was. I hadn’t seen him cry like that since we lost Ty. It makes sense, of course, as we sat there reflecting on all that Ty went through, and what mom was going through in that moment. Sonny said that he couldn’t stop thinking abo