It has been 44 years this week since my dad died. It was all such a long time ago and I am glad I wrote down these memories of him when I did.

Elegy To My Father

I

My dreams took years to comprehend your death.
Each night they found you
Sipping coffee in the hard kitchen chair
Lost in a book,
Children’s chaos somehow tuned out.
Your absence jolted me awake each morning.
How could I have forgotten?

Then I found you less frequently,
A voice in the background reminding me,
“This is only a dream, you know,
He’s not really here.”
Eventually your image disappeared completely,
The empty chair removed.

II

I know your absence more intimately
Than I ever knew your presence.
Quiet man descending into your basement office,
Your remote thoughts.

You were quantum physics,
Astronomy, metallurgy,
Complicated political theories.
You were classical piano,
Emily Dickinson.
You were unreachable brilliance.

It has been twenty years since you died
And still
I try to climb the intellectual peaks
Where I last saw you.

III

Half my genes code for question marks.
Who were you, who am I?
I look back for signs,
Retrace the paths of my childhood
And my mother’s home
For glimpses of you.

There is only one photograph of us.
I am shirtless, about three years old,
Sitting on your shoulder.
We are both smiling,
But I look anxious,
Waiting to be set down.

I sift through your piano music,
Looking for something familiar.
There is Bach, Chopin, Beethoven,
But one worn piece catches my eye,
Shumann’s Scenes from Childhood.

IV

I remember your year-long dying.
“My father’s got cancer,” I told my friends
And waited for the explosion of comforting words.

But you bore it in silence,
Each new assault endured.
Dressing changes, indignities of exposure,
Slow draining of life,
Hopes deflated by test after test.

It was Mom you watched,
Patient with her reluctant surrender
To inevitable loss,
Teaching her what she’d need to know-
Finances, small home repairs,
Arranging ways for her to fill
The oncoming empty hours,
Down to the detail of a Christmas gift
For the holiday you knew
You would not live to see.

V

You died in private,
Your family dining in the next room.
Mom said she felt your spirit
Hover over the table that night.
Having said your good-byes,
Knowing we’d be alright,
You carefully closed the circle
And slipped quietly away.

It’s in your death that I find
What eluded me in your life.
Silence was your way.
In a world too full of noise,
Silence is how you live in me.

By Maria Brady-Smith