June eighth:
That random warm summer day
I heard
That in the hospital, an hour away
There was a room where my father lay;
Surrounded by doctors and nurses,
Conscious as they pushed, a wire up and into his brain;
To remove the thing, that awful thing
That could take my father away forever.
A blood clot that sat unaware in his vein;
One stroke that minimized everything.

From the time of the phone call
I sat in my room
Isolating myself
Coping with my thoughts as best I could
I wondered if he was ok

We went to see him for the first time,
On Father’s Day:
My 11 year old little sister and I
Balloons and cake and presents.
All smiles so as not to make it worse.
When I saw him I bit my lip,
That warm coppery taste filled my mouth
Instead of the tears that would have been.

When he talked his words slurred, uneven
He saw the pain in my eyes and tried to seem more himself,
He tried to sit up and straighten,
But he had lost much of his strength and could not.
I sat with him, next to his bed
My mind numb and afraid

The only noise the underlining sound of the TV
After a time he reached over with his good arm and squeezed mine
Just like he always does
But his voice wavered,
And something new became clear to me.

Even as he was still my father and alive
He was no longer the father
Made to be immortal to a small child:
Someone that is always there
No matter what, never going away,

But that is not an immortal idea.
It is but what it is
What people want it to be;

Its not truth.
For, at any second anywhere
My father can be taken from me.
Now life tells me that my father is mortal.
Just like any other
He works to regain what was lost;
Step by step,
New things return.
But still some evade him
And he sometimes saddens,
Mourning his taste, or strength in a hand or finger.

Ideas are immortal and ever changing
Their creators however, meet their own end,
And one time or another are taught why…
Perhaps for my father this is but a life lesson.
And perhaps he will learn from it.
Perhaps the lesson wasn’t only for him.