A Poem for My Father and My Father's Father

I remember the last moments I ever shared with grandpa.

He was lying under white sheets,

like once pale paper consumed by flame: he was withering and gray.

When he died you said he left us nothing.

I used to think , that was because he never had anything to give,

so I thought your death would be quite similar.

I sat in grandpa’s hospital room and thought of you.

I imagined the dramatic death scenes

from all the movies I have watched with dead fathers.

At first attempting to cut and paste from them

the right frame of words to place around an impossible phrase.

But then I thought about how most movies lied.

There was no background music,

no piano to prepare me for what I was seeing.

There was no glowing aura of light surrounding his death.

It was ugly.

And the moment was ugly because my next impossible phrase:

the only three words that ever mattered, I failed to say.

I did not want my last words to grandpa to be a lie.

So I told him,

“I used to think I loved you, but that was before

I realized you can not love someone unless you know who they are.”

I barely cried.

My tears walked the tightrope between falling and clinging desperately to my waterline.

They did not want to feel the salty sting of shame as they ran down my cheeks.

I did not plan for my last words to him to be a regret.

They say that pride is the most deadly sin and now I think I know why.

It is because what Mom told me was true.

She said I have a small child inside of me,

that I need to love her like she was my most precious gift.

I am beginning to learn who she is.

She does not fear the truth like I do.

I know that rejecting you completely,

scaring you away, would be way easier than watching you walk again,

than letting my heart feel satisfied and contented only for it to be taken.

I know the joy is not worth the pain anymore.

But she,

she would not be so selfish.

I do not know her very well but

there is one thing I know she would do

the only useful thing you ever told me to do.

She would love you inspite of yourself.

She would know that loving you was the best thing that she could do,

That fighting to love you was the only way to protect herself,

so she would not despise you for hurting her.

she would forgive you.

And I will fight to because

I do not want my next words to you to be a lie,

so my last words to you will not be a regret.

they will be silent

there will be your thick callaced hands intertwined with my long tan fingers

there will be lungs inhaling heaven and exhaling Earth

there will be eyes admiring brown and gold irises

there will be memories of a little girl a top Daddy’s knee

pretending to be driving

there will be the memory

of stars

of the soothing rattle of your semi-truck,

even though

the rain pounded violently against the wind shield

vision blinded

you somehow guided me to safety