The Wishing Shelf Award - Gold Winner 2017 We only learned about our father's girlfriend after he became deathly ill and lay in a coma 120 miles from our home. Overhearing the nurse tell Linda--since I was nine I had called my mom by her first name--about the girlfriend who came in almost every day to visit him when we weren't there confirmed that the last moment of normal had passed us by without our realizing it...