For my dad.
Can we make
up for the time lost?
You hand me
the dirty kitchen towel which you used while making us dinner, and now it’s
held by your gnarled old hand, where a long time ago in the military you almost
blew your thumb off. My hands pale in comparison, thin skin, and the veins
always sticking out so sickly.
The reward
of being close to you, of being so vulnerable and all exposed is that of you
handing me dirty towels in a worn kitchen last redone in the 70s. I sit and I
cry and I cry, and I just don’t do anything else. Damn this.
Can I make
up for the things my mother told me to think about you?
You come
around in your time, from the garden where you have been all day, tearing out
weeds. If I were to be 5 again, running through the high grass and beneath
garland shapes, flowers hanging everywhere and there you are at the stone
stairs picking wild strawberries for me. With your already then aged, gnarled
hand.
Somewhere
deep within me, when I think about you, something so sore breaks me open. And I
cry again, into dirty kitchen towels.
Can I ever
do you justice by words?
You have
never tucked me in. I think back, and I cannot remember a single time when you
have completely intruded on my boundaries and taken over my land of life,
leading me instead of letting me lead myself. All you have granted me is the
love of the one you love, with heart, bone and soul. She never did have
children of her own, and in her eyes there has been a strong and vindictive
belief of holding values high. I have not suffered from the silent yearning
whispering ever mutely between her and I, and you have been correct in showing
me this. The ties grown in this garden have been deeper than rivers of blood,
stronger than the memory of skin. I am your only flesh, and not of her, but through
the two of you, I have seen the only unity that is stronger than life.
Will I let
myself be forgiven?
Knowing I
have returned to you and seeing your still bright eyes filled with the
knowledge of all the years you were not allowed to hold me, you finally can. We
are cast gently into a sea, where we find the way back to another, and there I
find a place for me in your heart. I dust the cobwebs off the framed photos, I
touch the books from before my time and from the window where I always like to
sit and gaze out at the rain I can see you coming up the stone stairs. Your
world is full of flowers, beauty and transcendence.
With your
gnarled old hand, you wipe away my tears.