Hospitals are cold places. They are factories for stabilization of wounds, curing disease, and starting the initial steps to recovery, but they are also where people die. It happens every day, but the environment is so sterile, so clinical, it's easy in the modern age to not really know what death is unless you work in it regularly.

My father-in-law is dying. He's been losing weight, becoming frail, and his system is shutting down. His mind is failing him, and he cries uncontrollably at times because he's scared and confused. When he has his good days, he can be cranky and irritable. Right now, he's having bad days, and we all know he's at the edge, about to pass. In fact, it's a surprise to the family when he makes another year.

However, being in a hospital makes it even more depressing. The environment does nothing for helping a person feel hope, ironic being that it's supposed to fend off illness and death. 

Worse, the patient is not my father. I stopped talking to him years ago; he's my wife's father. So she's feeling the brunt of all the memories washing over them both, staring at the man who is now crumpled in a hospital bed in front of her, as weak as a baby, and yet this was the same father who carried her as a little girl. 

So I do what I know best. I take photographs to preserve the moments, many too personal to show here. I capture the moment so, when the grief is past, she can look at them and remember his last days along with everything else. I talk to my father-in-law when she needs a break or has to talk to the medical staff. One moment he's joking, and the next he can't speak with tears welling up. He already knows someone else is in the room patiently waiting. We can't see that person yet, but my father-in-law can. I keep taking photographs on the scant idea I might catch a glimpse, a blur, but I'm fooling myself.

Hospitals are empty. There's nothing there.