When my uncle Frankie died
I didn’t think much about death
or the short fact of living.
I thought about my cousin Siobhan.
Everybody did.
He left 3 children dying,
but Siobhan was already dead -
the part that harvested hope anyway.
But people tend to focus on what’s missing
probably because we're all obsessed with growing.
Anyways, I knew then that she’d try to fill that void
like a hoarder, collecting anything within reach.
But her father’s watch wasn’t a token of relief
it sent her body into epileptic shock,
clutching white-knuckled at his biological clock.
And his glasses? Well she still wears them
but if she misplaces them for a moment
she’s liable to panic into another dimension.
Yes, Frankie’s death defined a tragedy
but Siobhan’s living only defined a tragic heroine
and all anybody could do was study her face,
know when it wrinkled from living
listlessly expressing that void, the missing,
the agonizing in the glass of her eyes
that tells me she’ll never again hear her father call her,
Blondie, creep up behind, massage her tired shoulders
and tell her without words that he will always be there –
there with her.
Siobhan would count her losses like this
making grief tangible in memory –
like the loss of language her and Frankie shared.
Sometimes at night I think of Siobhan
at last thanksgiving watching her daddy wave back to her
on home movies never saying much but smiling wide,
wide enough to make you gulp and twitch
and feel the hairs of your arm rise.
I remembered thinking that not many daddy’s have kindness in their smile.
But I knew then that everybody was playing detective
secretly watching Siobhan, screening her face
for clues to a crime unsolved
talking to every other family member in the room.
I often wished I felt brave enough
to grab her hand and squeeze it to stone
and tell her very “undetective” like,
“If this isn’t love, I don’t know what is.”
