A Strong and Silent Type

Fathers of that era did not hug or touch or intimate their love. He was the same Did he love us, we his kin, his blood-seed. He did not say, yet I believe he did. He was a provider, for sure. A taste for beer, never dissolute and he smoked as most working folk, did then. An adept gardener, his vegetables supplemented our meagre rationed diet. Did he care, he never said, I’m sure he did. What made him tick, deep down, I mean where only introspectives, types like me will sometimes dig. It is easy, so easy to theorise. His generation, strong and silent, did not discuss such things, especially with his son, such things were never done. Maybe..perhaps with Mum. Feelings were not shared but held back, within. A reservoir of emotions controlled, withheld until death shatters the dam. Is that why I cried so, the day he died and still I wonder.. did I cry for me, or was it for him