You were here for a long time, and then you began to disintegrate. Every visit, more of you had crumbled. What is both beautiful and terrible is that your love for me was still there, overgrown, buried, half-strangled, but present, and sometimes I could see it. You wanted me to be OK. You wanted to make things OK for me.
This is so easy, trivial even, when children are young. You scoop them up. You cradle them close. You speak to them in the soothing voice that silts down into their bones to lie there, fallow, for decades, until one day it emerges from their mouths, bubbling up in response to a child's cry.
It's harder, later, as your children grow older and smarter, darker and more private. You attempt; you falter. You call when you shouldn't have called, stand to one side when you should have stepped up. You can't stanch every wound, but you try, and your trying is, in and of itself, a balm.
It's even harder when the hurt is you, and the way you are unwillingly ceding yourself, acre by acre, inch by inch, word by word. You give ground. But you still ache to help. You still hold my hand. You still put out your hand to catch my tears.
I want to give you the gift of my happiness, because a child's happiness is every parent's secret dream. But I'm human, piebald, so I give you instead an acknowledgement of my debts. You made me, whole. You made me whole.
I love you, Dad.
1942-2019
