for his sins

my father is a ghost
who sits inside
four blank walls, waiting
for my phone call.

for his sins
this is how he
ended his life,
this is how he
will spend
eternity.

as for me
i'm left to wonder
if we ever had
a conversation...

LPK
LiveJournal
12.5.2009

Nothing to Say

The day before my father's funeral, my sisters said to me, "Would you want to write something to read at the funeral?" I'd arrived home with laryngitis and I said, "No, I can hardly talk." And they said, "We know that, but just write something and one of the boys will read it for you."

Sensing that they would persist, I said, "No, not now, I really don't have anything to say." And they said, "Look, we know that things were never the best between you and Dad, but you write so well and we thought there might be something." Impatient, I said with finality, "No, there's really nothing."

After the funeral and the lawyers and the sorting through things, I drove myself home. A few days later I sat in the dining room with a binder full of things that I'd written several years before, around the time we'd moved my father into assisted living and that long, resilient life of his seemed to be winding down.

In it was something I'd written with the thought that I'd someday read it at his funeral. In it, I retold several of his stories, about the wagon ride down Old State Road with all the family's belongings to what would become the family farm, about the girl he'd met years later in assisted living who'd known of his family back then but had never met him, about his struggles as he approached the end.

After the funeral and the lawyers and the long drive home, I sat in my dining room and read what I'd written. I sat there and read it out loud and practiced it and made it perfect. Just as if I would, one day, be reading it at his funeral...

LPK
LiveJournal
12.5.2009