Poetry Series: Day 6

Day 6 of the Grief and Loss Poetry Series. ONE MORE DAY to go. Thank you for joining me. I’d love to know how any of these poems have spoken to you or helped you on your own grief and loss journey. Your comments touch my heart more than you know!

True confession time. I love reading rhyming poems that other people have written but I really do not like doing them myself. Not a point of confidence for me as a poet, but I wanted to try it for at least one day of the series, so here it is. Many of you know, but some may not, that my dad passed away in 1994, when I was in second grade. Before his passing my life was pretty tumultuous to begin with and it included a lot of instability. Because of that I honestly don’t have a whole lot of memories with him. The ones that I do have are vivid and mostly positive. I feel like I knew him better than I did because I’ve tried to be an avid collector of Mike Pascarella stories over the years, but personally I don’t have all that much. All the big moments in my life past age eight were bittersweet—happy that they were happening, sad because he wasn’t there. I also spent a lot of time being angry with him. He died of a heart attack at age 48. He also smoked like a chimney and took very poor care of himself. What if he made different choices? What if he took control of his health sooner? What if, what it, what if? I’m not angry anymore, but I have used it as fuel to try to take better care of myself. Sometimes I nail it and sometimes I eat the extra large slice of cake with an extra big scoop of ice cream.

I sometimes wonder what it would be like if he were still alive, but at the same time, I wonder if my siblings and I would be the kind of people, the kind of parents, we are today if that were the case? Only God knows. And I trust God’s timing a lot more than I trust myself, so although I have moments of “what if,” I also have peace.

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Thoughts on Dad

Five years later
I typed you a note
Not sure if you’d heard
All the updates I wrote
But I spoke it aloud
Standing tall in the yard
Hoping you’d hear it
If I tried really hard

Ten years later
graduation commenced
Of some roads I was certain,
others didn’t make sense
I wished you could see it
I knew you’d be proud
That’s my girl, you might say
As you’d watch with the crowd

Twenty-five years later
I’m a parent to three
I pretend to teach them
But they daily school me.
Of this I am certain,
To honor you, dad
The best way is to love them
As much as I can.