Thank you for taking the time to do such a thorough review of this as well!
On terms of expansion, what I was going for is basically the son knowing nothing about his father until the very end. It's basically what happened to me before my father passed, and is actually all the things I managed to learn about him in a short amount of time.
When he found out he had terminal liver and pancreatic cancer, it left him shaken, and the complete opposite of the personality he had my entire life. For the first two weeks he was explosive and violent, but at the end he started talking about how he grew up and his family like he never had before. I learned a bit about him over the years from other people, but never from him directly, as we never really had a relationship, and whenever he was around, well, let's just say I didn't want to be. He moved in with me because he couldn't take care of himself, and a few weeks later, he was dead.
You're dead on about the 'speaking at' part as well; that's how he always was. I should have interrupted some with the son asking questions and giving comments, and did consider doing it. If the story was a bit more fleshed out and developed, a monologue may have worked a bit better.
I agree with you wholeheartedly on the ending. I was under the assumption, with this being at the very beginning of the jam, that it HAD to contain NSFW elements, and I couldn't really think of a way to incorporate it. I would delete that part entirely now if I could, and debated doing so later on in the jam once I was aware, but already had too many irons in the fire, both in and out of the Jam by that point. Maybe next year I can be a part of a team. Right now, my ability is extremely basic, but at least I am tenacious and can get things done!
Again, great review, and thanks for your comments!
The one thing I've determined during the course of this event is planning out my writing more in advance; my style has always been to just sit down and plow through something from start to finish, and make small tweaks along the way. Right now, I know it's my weakness, and I plan to look more into what to do, and not to do, when creative writing. I have decent instincts, but need to refine it more to make something more substantial.