This morning, I ate two and a half biscuits in three minutes flat. I’m not proud of this record, though my gluttony does attest to the power of this damn good biscuit recipe. It also says something about grief.

You see, earlier this week, doctors told my daddy he is dying. The medicine prescribed for his progressive lung condition, a disease brought on by 20 years of back-to-back shifts in a Western North Carolina paper plant, isn’t working. All we can do now is sit around hoping he’ll be eligible for a lung transplant from a suitable recently-deceased donor, which honestly is a weird thing to hope for.