diner


melissa: so i guess explain myself
i mean thanks for coming by the way
it's weird you kind of look like him
just a little, i know it's like weird sometimes when people say that but yeah
it's like i know you kind of but i don't know you at all, i don't, but i know you
i've been watching the videos so that's like, that's weird
ah ok i'm studying nursing at the university of arizona, i did a semester at odyssey hospice so that's where your dad was
yeah it was part of my degree um i just became really interested in your dad so i actually stayed a little bit past my semester until he died

mdt: hold on, he died in tuscon?

melissa: yeah

mdt: you live in tuscon?

melissa: yes

mdt: arizona?

melissa: yes
it was a long drive but i made it so..i'm here

no i just drove her tonight.  well.. you posted my calls

mdt: uhuh

melissa: and um so i thought wow, maybe, you know i could help so..

asked about tapes

melissa: it's weird he told me um that all this things, well not specifically, that he'd done a lot of things bad in his life. he gave me instructions to burn his trailer or something? once he died

i'm assuming now that i've watched his tapes that there might be... i don't even know where this tailer is

visitors

melissa: i mean your sister came a lot, at least several times, and uh you uncle he came i guess only once, but yeah, i never saw you there

yeah she came quite a few times actually, it's weird neither of them ever mentioned you

your dad had made a compaint about one of the other, one of the other guys who was helping him. he requested that only i help him so.. and uh i don't know, he took a liking to me

mdt: he was nice to you?

melissa: yeah, well i mean he wasn't himself when he was in the hospice, and obviously when you're in a hospice, you're facing death so sometimes it changes people, i don't know
i guess i'm special

do not continue videos

melissa: i wasn't sure but i did watch some and um really interesting stuff, i mean i'm studying psychiatry so i try to analyze some of them but um
i guess actually i thought about it because i was a little um.. i'm not sure if it's a joke. i don't know, it's a little exciting don't you think

the one that got away

melissa: so were your parents married?  it's so strange because he talks about this girl, emily, do you know her? hmm
he always refers to her as the one that got away. so maybe it was like a high school sweetheart or something

jane doe

mellissa: why would i recognize her?
no
there's like a million people in the world, i don't know

could dad have killed somebody

mellisa: um
he, he was really weird. sometimes he would apologize for things, you know just like little things, but... it felt deeper, and it felt like it was coming from someplace that wasn't just about not finishing his pudding, or dropping his glass of water, or..
it felt really embedded and..
i only know him on a surface level, it's not like we had these deep deep conversations but he definitely.. he had a vibe to him that made me take interest because ...
it's a little weird and that's what i like, weird so uh

upset

mellissa: he definitely had a couple sides to him, and depending on what time of day you caught him you might see a different side.
well i mean everybody has a bad day right, so uh..
there was an instance when yeah, i was there a long time, a whole semester, so i saw some of the days when he woke up on the wrong side, but i mean nothing too extreme.

scientology

melissa: um.. i'm not that familiar with scientology but he did have um, well like i said we didn't have that deep of conversations but i feel like um from what i saw because he did have writings and things

mdt: he had writings?

melissa: yeah, he would jot, just jot things down i think um..
i don't know if i could get them, i could try, but we just encourage the patients to write a journal. it helps. so um that might be illegal or something but maybe i could find it.
i mean i didn't think about that
i really just came here for, i mean um to help
i hope i am helping
a lot of people i've been working at the hospice i realize that people need closure, and maybe i could help you with that

copy of chart

maybe, i mean i don't really work in filing room but i can work on it. i bet that's where the writings are.  i should have thought of this stuff before. ahhh 8 hours! ok...mental note, file, writings.
so i guess we'll have to meet again