Tears For Dad (a post Father’s Day poem)

I didn’t want to say goodbye
I would gladly have spent more sleepless nights at your bedside;
I know, quite selfish of me to hold on so,
But you were my best friend.
I wanted more time with you
I wanted you to tell me more of how life was when you were young.
With you I was able to live through decades I had never seen,
I could listen to you and imagine life simpler, maybe
without as much chaos and stress as I sometimes feel.

You were my connection to family members I never knew,
those family relationships of which death had robbed me;
When you recounted exchanges with your dad and your mother,
and when you remembered times with your older sisters and brothers;
suddenly those old gray-scale photographs were full of color
and I could see smiles in expressionless faces.

But, no more now; I must content myself
with my own memories that are beginning to fade;
you are yet alive there.
And now I feel such a need
to somehow immortalize you in my words;
foolish me,
I know you’ve already done that by your love to so many;
Yet, how will my little offspring know what a wonderful person you were,
I must no longer keep the wonderful relationship we had to myself,
I must share the warmth, joy and love knowing you has brought to me,
I love you, my dear departed Dad, you are still the flickering light glowing within my soul.

-Donald R. Sansbury, 2013