Father

Our writing assignment for this week was to write about, preferably in poetic form, someone significant to us who has died or otherwise left our lives. The writing of my classmates once again impressed me. 

I share my effort.

Father “ … Mom wouldn’t let you tell me she was dying?” There, the question was asked; it came pretty easy. Your eyes, Dad, filled with tears, “I don’t know; Ken or I should have … ” I let you off the hook then. Too early; too easily; perhaps too habitually. Always the way. There was one other question,  “Why didn’t you tell me anyway?” but it remained both unasked and unanswered. For eight years, I didn’t ask you again. And then, without warning, you moved – from 350 miles away to 1050 miles away. And got sick. And died. And took my answers to the nether world. Had you lived, we’d have remained separate as ever, I imagine. In the nine years you’ve been gone, I wonder if I should have asked you one more time; maybe you’d have actually answered. I know not; I wonder still.

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