Dear Dad

I don’t remember much of you from my early youth

except you peeing for thirty minutes,

and our only time playing catch with the baseball

and standing in the bathroom with blood gushing

from my mouth, a knot in my lip for weeks

After the divorce, I remember years of your house

being Neverland, a box of milk duds from Archie’s

eating the whole thing till my jaws were sore

staying up late, and cooking a whole pound of bacon

by myself, until the day I dropped a piece in the grease

and had boils from the burns for a month

until they popped painfully

Then following my foray into young love, the ensuing chaos,

I returned like the prodigal son, and you accepted me,

gave me a place to rebuild myself, and overcompensating

for the hardness of your father, you avoided discipline.

Encouraged me to drop out of college, and I floundered

like the fish we caught on the oyster shell island in Smith Point

To this day I think I resent you for choices you made

indiscretions you indulged because you rationalized it

Use the company card here and there, you deserved it,

they didn’t appreciate you, so you took it

And then the hammer fell, thirty years and you were out

in the blink of an eye, and then I watched you cry

for the first time in my life, sitting in the breakfast nook

as the weight of the choices settled in

I tried helping you with unemployment, since I was

good with computers, but you didn’t want work, so

you had me start faking the job searching

You were resentful and fell into the bottle even harder

“Hello, wall” that joke that was more sad than funny

but we had to laugh so we didn’t cry

I respected you for being with your father in his final days

one silver lining of not working was you got to do that

to support him in the end with whatever you could do

But we were left to fend for ourselves, my siblings and I

We should have grown up sooner, but once you left

and your trailer was taken from under us,

I had to make a choice, and in my mid-twenties

finally started the process of growing up

Then came years of distance, and then the calls started

that you were in the hospital again and again, first

the afib, fluid buildup, and finally cirrhosis,

a diagnosis so grim, I started thinking it was over

But you’ve made a lot of progress in the intervening years

You finally stopped drinking, but the damage was done

Your health improved thanks to the miracle pill

And now you wait on a new liver that may never come

There is so much more to say, the trip to key west,

the sunset sailing trip with the dolphins where I had

too much champagne and talked a young couple’s ears off

The week we spent at your house during a week-long freeze

because you didn’t lose power, the wax ring on the toilet

we changed, the weekly steak night before you lost your job,

the pan-fried sliced potatoes and sausage you’d make with onions

I could write and write and write, and never capture it all

and that’s okay, it happened, and it lives in me, and the good and

the bad have made me, me

I love you

I forgive you