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and post notes and photos about your poem like Thomas Mansfield.
I never gave this last poem to my dad until the day he died. It was written about 10 or so years before, when he had just successfully undergone a 3rd cancer (of the jaw) operation that not even the senior surgeon who had conducted the other, earlier operations years before that, thought he would ever come out of anaesthetic, let alone survive and continue his life. . I was having to leave to go to the airport (to return to Malta) and I saw them wheeling him out. We (brother and sisters) went near the hospital trolley and although he had his eyes closed he gave a small smile and stuck his thumbs up. I started to write the poem on the plane back to Malta that evening.
I had been meaning to give it to him, but had not done in case he mocked me or made light of it. He probably would not have. I will never know. I asked that the original poem that I had carried with me for a number of years, was burnt with him when he was cremated