I looked at the scrap of paper. Undergarments, batteries for his hearing aids, a pair of brown trousers, the checkbook and register in the leather folder, and, most importantly, his pad and pen. He said it wouldn't matter if I missed something or couldn't find what he needed but I knew it mattered. When you are ten days from your 94th birthday, lying in a hospital bed fighting off a nasty infection, your heart racing to pump off the constantly encroaching fluid, fluid threatening to shut the whole deal down antibiotics be damned, it matters. Especially, the pad and pen.

So I drove off in his late model Crown Vic without my glasses, through the rain and snow, seeing nothing clearly except everything that mattered. He wasn't afraid of dying he had told me, but he didn't want to miss anything. I figured if he didn't want to miss anything, I'd try not to either. So I made my way through the small town, the old Vic's wipers furiously bumping and scraping, pushing the frozen mix back and forth across the windshield, my eyes squinting as I drove past Morin's Diner, past churches and strip malls, past shuttered plants, and rows of houses blinking with multi-colored Christmas lights.

He built the house at 757 West Street in 1950, back before they dug the

reservoir out back and I-95 out front. When he finished his house, he built one down the street for his mother and then one next door for his mother-in-law. The three lots marking time on a New England country road might have been the brown squares on a Monopoly Board, tucked between Community Chest and Baltic Avenue. Not Park Place or even Marvin Gardens, but respectable, a dependable asset for a conservative, steady player. Which would suit him perfectly.

I unlocked the front door of the house, flipped a lamp switch and pulled the list out of my jacket pocket. The light, jagged scrawl belied his physical age but you could mark his razor-sharp thoughts by the organization. Bedroom closet, den closet, hat tree, dining room table.

I walked from spot to spot, finding each item exactly where he instructed it would be, double checking the list, gathering the things he wanted into a clear plastic bag I found hanging across a doorknob in the hall, left over, no - saved, from his last hospital visit. I got all his things. The things that matter when you are almost 94 and don't want to miss anything.

The next day, they danced and darted around the words but paying attention, and wanting to hear it anyway, we got the point. He was out of the woods. He's going to pull through.

Conrad Achilles Morel will celebrate his 94th birthday on December 22, 2014. He may not have extravagant plans but one thing you can count on. He doesn't plan to miss it.