Last Days

reflections on ten years without my dad

When I kept watch in your last days,
watching you slowly fade away,
syringing morphine into your mouth
per the hospice instructions nurse
I knew what I was losing—
the future with you in it. 

I knew there would be a hole at holidays, 
celebrations you would miss,
grandchildren you’d never meet,
conversations we’d never have.

Dad: a memory, 
No longer a person I can call.

But I couldn’t have known
the way my voice would crack
one morning on the drive to school
when my youngest child
(who you never met)
asked if he could visit you in heaven.
He wondered where the picture was
of you holding him as a baby
just like the one he’d seen, 
of you and his big brother.

There isn’t one.

I couldn’t have known
the way I’d struggle for words
when someone asks who my 
middle child looks like,
the one who shares your middle name,
(you never met him, either).
The way grief would suddenly,
swiftly, powerfully,
overwhelm me.

I couldn’t have known
all the questions I would want to ask,
the answers I’ll never be able to know.
The way I’d wonder your opinion on
the state of the world and
the book I just finished reading,
the way the first notes
of a Neil Diamond song
would bring tears to my eyes.

I couldn’t have known, 
ten years later,
how much would change;
the person I am, 
the world around me,
my children, 
growing by leaps and bounds.

But I knew—
and I was right—
that I’d miss you 
for every single one
of those 3,652 
and a half days
since we said goodbye.