is my Sunday Rumpus essay. My heart was hurt in the making of it. Sometimes we have to hurt to heal. I’m glad I wrote it. I’m glad I published it. I’m glad to see Dad’s photos and pen name published. He would have gotten a kick out of that. He would have loved to reach so many people with his stories, recounted here in the essay. He would have loved to live longer. I’m still sad he didn’t. Still sad my parents suffered so much in life and in death. I’m working hard to let the sadness go, to say Amen and Peace and Goodbye.
An excerpt:
“This past July, I stood over my father’s hospital bed and contemplated suffocating him with his pillow. Five weeks earlier, Dad had walked into hospital in his good clothes, uneven shoe heels, and with his small bag of belongings hanging from his large, gardener’s hand—a fit and hale seventy-eight year old man still graced with his full faculties. He felt afraid and irritable, nervous about his surgery to treat an aortic aneurism in his abdomen but hoping to recover and return home.” Continue reading…