3 Lessons Learned From My Father’s Death
Friday Flow Is Back
--
So many of us seek answers to life
as if there is something better for us
until our final moments
when we look back
and see
everything was
right under our feet.
It’s 4:02 am on Friday and words flow through me like rapids in the Colorado River. It’s therapy in a funnel. I write when I’m heavy or else my demons take me to an underworld I might not recover from.
August was one of the toughest months I’ve had since my divorce. My dad passed thirty-eight days ago and it’s been challenging to accept. It’s something in a man's life you can’t escape. An inevitable threshold and a scar that is proof you can rise from the depths of hell.
Which explains all the poems I’ve written lately despite them feeling like scattered stanzas across the faded pages of my past. Writing poetry isn’t something you just do. It becomes a part of you . And if you don’t write, you become lost on the dusty shelves of the past like everyone else.
My dad never told stories. At least not until his final few months when we reconnected over coffee, blueberry muffins, and baseball. When I was a kid, he never came to my games. But our coffee chats in the hospital weren't about what didn’t happen, they were a way to connect with that lost little boy who needed a dad.
Although I write a lot about life, I rarely talk about my dad. So, I am writing this flow for me, which is why it might seem a little all over the place.
For the last three years, I’ve tried to justify, maybe even dismiss this part of me that needs to be healed. From the moment my dad told us he was slowly dying, it felt not real and writing kept me asleep to it all. But when he fell down a few months ago, I became more conscious of my where I needed to heal and began to feel myself slowly releasing any resentment or anger I had against him.
