Oh, Father of Mine
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This past winter, I visited my father, whom I had rarely seen during my life. He was then put in something called "comfort care" in a rehab center of Olympia, WA and his wife Cleofe was visiting him daily. She has always been like a saint for him! My father was in the Korean War where his mental illness manifested and he was never the same after he returned to my mother. His doctor this year gave him both a shingles shot and a flu vaccine at the same time ( I am SO PISSED off at our medical system). The next day he awoke unable to walk. It was downhill since then, for he had to lie in a bed barely able to eat and suffering with many diseases, one of them a terrible infection called Cdiff , which he got from his immune level being so low.
I know my father is going to go to a much better place, where his full health will be restored.. This is my tribute to him which hopefully I may read at his funeral this coming Thursday. He passed away the first day of summer, June 21, 2019. He was 9 days short of his 89th birthday.
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Oh father of mine - who long has withstood
trials to which I can’t even relate -
how sad you must feel – how misunderstood.
On your deathbed you lie, filled not with hate.
Unable am I to communicate
with you very well, for thus is our fate.
Oh father of mine, long-faced much like me,
with eyes like mine too, but more tinged with blue,
any words you might say – a rarity-
I try so hard to elicit from you.
Word that would show me what I never knew -
the “you” that my mother knew. . . but years flew.
Oh father of mine, years flew to this time
where I sit by your bed, watching you die -
all questions unanswered - as I write this rhyme.
Mental illness estranged you from me. Now I
am here- but lacking emotion to cry
as mortality I’m seeing fly by.
I hope in the next life, oh, father of mine,
our feelings and thoughts at last can entwine.
May 5, 2019
For The Urban Sonnet Poetry Contest of Emile Pinet
My father is at last at peace. He passed away June of 2019.
Copyright © Andrea Dietrich | Year Posted 2019
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