We gather at my brother’s home
and his wife has ordered 57 duck calls.
They were not in time for the party,
but when we arrive to find them
on the front stoop, immediately
we open the box and almost a dozen adults
begin blowing on the duck calls—
not just once or twice,
but for twenty minutes
we make rising calls, falling calls,
sharp quick staccato calls,
calls to the beat of Bridge Over the River Kwai.
It is loud and raucous and somewhere
in heaven, my father I am sure
was blowing, too, and giggling
until tears ran down his cheeks
and he rubbed his wet eyes with his fists.
There were tears today, sobs, even,
but my god tonight how we laughed
as we made the sound my father loved—
the sound to call in the birds.
How it called in his memory, startling
and alive—how I felt him wing in—
not sure if the tears on my cheeks
were his or mine.
Posts Tagged ‘father’
After My Father’s Memorial
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, daughter, duck call, father, grief, memorial on July 9, 2022| 5 Comments »
On My Dad’s First Birthday Since His Death
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birthday, daughter, father, life after death, love on July 5, 2022| 14 Comments »
I don’t sing Happy Birthday tonight
when I light the candle,
but I say his name and celebrate
the life of the man born this day
seventy-eight years ago in Joliet, Illinois,
the man who brought ingenuity,
courage and silliness to the world,
the man who told my mother everyday
she was beautiful, the man who
believed in hiring people more talented than he,
the man who flew home to be at my concerts,
the man who drove me to piano lessons,
the man who wept when I moved away.
My own life is a celebration of his life—
he lives inside every word, every action,
every patience, every plan.
Every day since his death, I light a candle.
Every day, I celebrate his life.
Every day, my father still shines.
The First Father’s Day Without Your Father
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, father, Father's Day, grief, loss on June 20, 2022| 8 Comments »
Perhaps you listen again and again
to his favorite song. Maybe you look
at photos of him and remember
birthdays and Tuesdays and boat trips
and snuggling on the couch.
Maybe you reach out to touch his head,
miss the soft fuzz of his buzz cut.
You might light a candle and say his name
as you have nearly every day since he died.
Of course, he loved “What a Wonderful World.”
And the world is wonderful, though damn,
what you wouldn’t give to hear him
say your name or your nickname,
to hear the sunshine in his voice—
how it touches your heart like sunrise on water.
You might walk out into the night
and converse with the stars as if he were listening.
Maybe you feel the strangest infusion of love,
as if your arms are tingling
and your chest is tingling
and you can’t explain it
but your whole body’s humming.
Perhaps you cry, but there is no way to know
what percentage of the tears is sadness
and what percentage is gratitude.
Perhaps you think of all the other daughters and sons
who have lost their fathers
and you open your heart to their loss.
You decide, again, to honor him
by living a life he’d be proud of.
Your father, perhaps you think
of the last day you saw him alive,
how he lifted his hands,
his eyes tracking something you couldn’t see.
Perhaps you practice remembering him—
his laughter, his fury, his advice, his silence—
and you notice how, each time you practice,
he is so close to you, as close as breath.
While Helping Mom Calculate Mileage for Her Taxes
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dad, daughter, father, gratitude, love, numbers, stubborn praise on March 9, 2022| 8 Comments »
I count all the Tuesdays, Thursdays
and Saturdays from January to mid-July,
all those days in Florida
when you drove an hour
to dialysis and sat there for hours
as the machines removed toxins
and water from your blood,
then drove an hour home.
I multiply that number times
the number of miles and arrive
at a number that means devotion.
Means grit. A number that means
I will live for you as long as I am able.
Remember, Dad, how no matter
how early you had to rise,
no matter how difficult the drive,
no matter how inefficient the process,
you did it. And every time
you thanked the people
who were keeping you alive.
At the end, when you couldn’t stand,
couldn’t sit, couldn’t lift your own arm,
they took you to dialysis on a stretcher.
When they’d move you,
you’d moan in pain, howl, even,
as they twisted your body
in ways it no longer could twist,
and then, with deep humility,
you’d thank the nurses.
Did you ever see them cry, Dad?
I did. I saw them walk out of the room
into the hall and weep,
so grateful to be thanked
for doing the work that hurts.
Two thousand nine hundred ninety miles.
That was the number for six months.
A number that means life is hard and I want it.
A number that says my body is stopping,
but my love grows.
A number that means, Yes, I will meet you, death.
Butnot yet. Not yet.
*
PS–I want to honor that my mom drove my dad many of these times, and many other times in other cities–and she, in such courageous, humble ways, was devoted to dad’s health and healing.
Walking 5th Avenue
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, father, grief, memory, New York on December 4, 2021| 8 Comments »
I am again fifteen
with my father,
my first trip to New York,
and he is not yet
in life-changing pain,
and we stare
in store windows,
eat street pretzels
and look for sales racks.
I don’t know yet
how he will hurt
too much to walk,
how even standing
will become impossible.
No, in this memory
we are walking
and laughing
as if we will forever,
as if there won’t
be a morning
when I wake in New York
almost four decades later
and reach to call him
and thank him
for that long ago trip,
only to remember
he can no longer
answer the phone.
All day, I hear his laughter
as I walk. All day,
I feel his hand
reaching for mine.
Remembering
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged alone, death, father, love, sea on December 2, 2021| 8 Comments »
In the moments after
my father died
I slid next to him on the bed,
and though I held
the anchor of his body,
still warm, I felt untethered
from above and below—
felt the loss of my father
and the loss of my son—
and knew myself adrift alone.
For a long time, I lie there,
too loose, too free,
alone, alone, alone,
and a tender voice
I have heard before
said, Oh sweetheart,
did you forget?
I knew what it meant—
did I forget love would meet me
anywhere I am? And love
showed me in that moment
an infinite sea and said,
Sweetheart, it’s true,
you’re alone. It’s always been true.
And the only thing
that will ever ground you
is not the object of love,
but love itself.
And there in those infinite waters
love baptized me as its own.
No horizon in sight.
And I am not alone.
Missing My Father
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, death, father, legacy, missing on November 26, 2021| 6 Comments »
When you miss him, look inside.
—Deb Stevens, private correspondence
Today when I miss my father,
I hear him in my voice when I say,
You’ll go broke saving money.
I feel his tenderness in the way
I hold my own daughter’s hand.
His laugh blooms inside my laugh
when I giggle hee hee hee.
Here he is, ever inside me.
Returning home from his death,
I feel transformed,
or is it I feel more me—
the me he helped to shape
with his life, the me
he is fashioning with his death,
the me I’m still learning how to be.
Leaning All the Way In
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged chair, daughter, death, father, grief on November 23, 2021| 22 Comments »
If I let it be,
grief is a chair
that supports me
when I crumple.
It requires
nothing of me
except that I give it
all my weight.
Limp, I sink in,
and it doesn’t ask me
to try to pretend
I could rise.
It lets me wet leaf.
It lets me empty room.
It lets me vast sky of gray.
It holds me.
I lean in.
I nothing for a time.
I slow ache.
And grief says
yes to me.
*
oh friends, my father took his last breath this morning just after 5 a.m. he was loving and full of gratitude and positive and warm till the end. I thank you for all the kind messages I have received–if I do not write you back, please know that I do read every message and thank you by name. I am so grateful for your support. I know the poems have been a fairly relentless chapter of grief–and love. And love. I have never been more in love with the world, even now, especially now.
There Is Only the Field
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged antelope, daughter, death, father, field, hospice on November 19, 2021| 16 Comments »
On the day my father begins hospice,
I watch the pronghorn in the field,
marvel as their brown- and white-striped bodies
nearly disappear in the dead grass where
they graze. If only I could camouflage
my father so death can’t find him, so that pain
would never have discovered him.
Tomorrow, my mother and brother and I
will gather around him the way a herd
might gather, circling him as some antelope
circle their young. But death will come.
And we, unable to run fast enough,
unable to hide, will meet it together.
And if I could fight death, would I? Whatever horns
I have are more for ritual than dangerous.
When death arrives, I want to bring
my softest self. I won’t bargain,
but I’ll tell death it’s taking the best of us—
the one who worked hardest to survive.
When death arrives, I want to ask it, Please,
be gentle. He suffered so much already.
I want to tell death, You don’t get all of him.
I carry in me his goodness, his courage.
While I live, he will always be alive in this field.
Packing My Parents’ Home
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, father, moving on July 5, 2021| 2 Comments »
Happy Birthday Dad!
Into the boxes I slip
my father’s birth certificate,
his high school yearbooks,
his wedding album,
and the diploma for his PhD.
I fold waders and coats,
pack saws and hammers,
wires and electrical things
I can’t name—but he can.
I pack journals filled with notes
of his favorite trips,
crossbow arrows
and feathers for tying flies.
But a life doesn’t fit in boxes.
No way to pack his glittering eyes,
his quick smile, the way he laughs
in recognition as I hold up
an old favorite knife.
No way to pack the hard years,
the wrestling with pain,
his drive to show up anyway,
day after day,
determined to bring his best
to the world, determined
to love life outside
the box.
The Pale Scar on My Ankle
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bike, childhood, daughter, father, love on June 20, 2021| Leave a Comment »
reminds me of the day
my dad held me
in front of him
while riding his bike
and fifty years later,
I remember most
the moments before
the bite of the spokes
when we were laughing
in the muggy Wisconsin June,
the sky dark with rain,
the joy of being held by him,
the thrill of going fast,
the wind in our faces.
I remember most
how he picked me up
as I cried and carried me
as if I were precious.
Fifty years later,
though he is the one
in pain, he still picks me up
and carries me every time
we speak. Thousands
of miles away, he holds
me close.
Missing My Dad
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged boat, dad, daughter, father, time on April 24, 2021| 2 Comments »
I hate riding in boats,
the way it makes
my body want to turn
inside out, hate the way
my body rocks for hours
after I’m back on land.
But I love the way
my father’s hands
rest on the wheel,
the way his eyes
scan the waves,
the easy slope
of his shoulders.
He’s so himself,
so whole, so someone
who I’m glad to know.
Standing on shore,
I wave at his boat,
as he points it
toward the deep.
He waves back
and smiles
with great love.
There are many
kinds of oceans—
time is one.
I hate the distances
we keep.
Small Things
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, father, kindness, small steps on November 25, 2020| 4 Comments »
Small things aren’t just important,
says my father. They’re everything.
And I think of how,
night after night, he’d lie
on his back on the floor
and bench press me
as I stood with one foot
in each of his hands.
Years later, every morning
he’d lift me with a phone call—
This is the Broadmoor. This is your
morning wake up call.
He’d say it in his snootiest,
haughtiest British butler voice.
And years later,
when we hold hands
he rubs his thumb across my thumb,
a small, familiar gesture of love.
Now, wishing I could hold
his hand while we sit
in different rooms together
a thousand miles away,
I can almost feel
the pad of his thumb
move across my knuckles
the way wind moves over water
and creates the weather.
It lifts me.
It’s everything.
On My Father’s 76th Birthday
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, dad, daughter, father, love on July 5, 2020| 5 Comments »
Already he’s lived a dozen years longer
than any other man in his bloodline.
One died of malaria. The rest of heart attacks.
Not one of them knew how to show love.
Sometimes a river changes its course—
perhaps slowly, eroding over centuries.
Perhaps all at once in a mighty flush,
as after a flood or an ice-floe.
I want to ask him how change happened in him—
how the impulse toward anger
rechanneled into tenderness,
into patience, into a willingness to be vulnerable.
I want to believe the same might happen for the world—
that by tending our hearts more carefully,
we might jump the banks of what seemed possible.
We are all of us here to be changed.
Lights Out
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, father, story on June 20, 2020| 5 Comments »
We would be tucked into our twin beds,
and dad would sit in the door way.
Every night, he’d tell us a story about a boy
and a girl who were very much
like my brother and me, only they lived
amongst the dinosaurs. I don’t remember
how the stories went, but I remember
how I loved them, how my father’s voice
became part of the night, how everything
always turned out right for the kids
in the story. How much I wanted
to be that girl who rode on a pterodactyl,
and how grateful I felt to be the girl I was,
snug under the thin blue blanket,
our small room a cave where anything
could happen, the low tones of my father
quietly cradling me toward sleep.
By Example
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, father, poem, poetry, teaching on September 11, 2019| 7 Comments »
He taught me you can never have too much love
or too much ice cream in the freezer. That it matters
how you shake someone’s hand. He taught me
to pile wet seaweed on a bare patch of dirt
so the earthworms will come to the surface.
He taught me how to cast, to set the hook, to filet.
He taught me to cheer for myself. Once,
he taught me to say no, and to mean it,
and we shouted it over and over into the phone,
our voices a joyful chorus of refusal. He taught me
that despite unceasing pain, you can still
be grateful to be alive. That it is possible
to love someone very different from you.
That you can go to different schools together.
He taught me to take life seriously, and then
to speak in made up languages and giggle till you cry.
He taught me you can’t save everyone, but
you can save a few. And it’s important that you do.
In the Northwestern Hospital ICU
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, father, hospital, icu, love, mother, parents, poem, poetry on July 21, 2019| 4 Comments »
And as my mother steeped toward slumber,
her thin body wired to monitors,
there, surrounded by incessant beeping
and the red and green mountains and valleys
of pulse and pressure and the slow drip
of IV tubes finding her veins, yes,
there as her speech became mumbly and her
eye lids heavied, my father leaned over
the rails of the hospital bed to smooth
her gray hair and kiss her lips and whisper
I love you. And she rallied a smile and
whispered it back. And there, in the sterile room,
with all its instruments of cardiac measurement,
there was nothing, nothing that could chart
how open my heart, how—unable to hold
all the love I felt for them both—it broke
in the most beautiful way. How I prayed
it would stay that open, that broken, that whole.
**
Dear friends, thank you for all your good wishes. After having a heart surgery go wrong a few days ago, my mother was released today from the ICU and is now resting at home, and though she is not out of the woods yet, she is not in imminent danger. It’s been very scary and I thank you for all your thoughtful messages and prayers and thoughts. Rosemerry
*
I Should Have Raised Dogs
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dad, daughter, dogs, father, love, parenting, poem, poetry on June 30, 2019| 8 Comments »
I should have raised dogs.
That’s what my father always said
when I did something stupid.
Like when my friend and I were twelve
and we snuck into Raiders of the Lost Ark
with two seventeen-year old boys.
And there was dad, waiting
outside the theater looking like
exactly what he was—a rabid dad
hellbent on scaring the shit out of any boy
who might have unvirtuous thoughts
about his girl. He never said
what kind of dogs—poodles or labs
or mutts. I can just see him
walking the corridor of his kennel,
all the dogs barking. But dogs weren’t
his calling—the crates, the training,
special diets, vets. No,
he was the master of loving me
through my crazy mistakes
and my hormonal angst and my sudden refusal
to eat meat. I still smile thinking of
the way he would sit on the couch
and hold his arm open for me
to come sit beside him then snuggle.
The way he bought me a book
to decode my dreams. The way he took me
to piano lessons every Saturday
morning, then took me out for brunch
so we could talk. The way he still listens
when I’ve done something stupid
and then tells me he loves me.
Never once, despite all his lamentations,
did I think he would exchange me
for a chihuahua or beagle. No, there
was something almost sweet in his wish,
a hint of surrender in it, the sound
of his heart opening just a little bit wider
to let in the world, unleashed as it is.
Translating my Father
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged father, language, love, poem, poetry on June 15, 2019| 5 Comments »
And when my dad said,
“You’ve gotta be shitting me,”
he meant, “I love you.”
And when he exclaimed,
“Christ on a bike,”
he meant, “I love you.”
And when he said,
“Turn off the TV,”
he meant, “Turn off the TV.”
And when he said,
“No,” I knew
he meant, “I love you.”
It was, in fact, easy
to translate, though sometimes
I didn’t like the native tongue.
But I felt that love in every word,
the love beyond syntax
love beyond lexicon,
love big enough to hold
us both for a lifetime
and then be passed on.