Ranked Lower Than Her Cat

Summary

The night my father was placed on comfort care at the hospice facility two hours outside Chicago, Bennett brought out the laminated Triage Rubric.

It was an index he had engineered during his second year at the consultancy—a clean, five-column matrix on heavy cardstock designed to "eliminate subjective bias from domestic logistics." We were supposed to write down our competing crises, assign weights to immediacy and systemic impact, and let the math dictate where he directed his time.

On my line, I wrote with a shaking hand: Drive with me to Rockford. Say goodbye to my dad.