Correction: My mother is the nitwit.

So I called my dad. "I thought I should tell you...you're a nitwit."

"This is not exactly news to me," he says on a chuckle.

I proceed to explain that I called Mom after calling him, despite my feeble battery life, so that Large Fry could talk to her. And she had asked if he'd told me that they'd declared Uncle D gone.

This is now news to him.

"Ah, so my mother is the nitwit."

"Well, we do tend to flock to our own kind," he says.

We will give Mom the benefit of the doubt, though, because she has reason to be acting like a nitwit. She was up at an ungodly hour, flew to Texas, and has spent the better part of the last ten hours in a hospital. And will be back at the hospital at four tomorrow morning for some final goodbyes before the transplant team comes in at 6a.

Dad did say that she'd communicated Uncle D was braindead, but he didn't realize that he was officially declared. Hey, I'm just sayin' what Mom told me. Brain death, though, is medically considered to be irreversible, and it is death. (Though there are some weird groups that will argue the point.)

He also relayed that he talked to Mom a little after I'd called and had Large Fry talk to her. She told him that it was "the bright spot" in her day.

I can't do much from here, but I at least got that part right.