Dad

At forty I realized something tha threatened to put me over the edge. I was terrified that my father might die No, not that he might. That he is going to. And I don't know how to face that.

I waited up for my father when I was three years old. I prayed for him constantly. The sight of him in my doorway in his business suit filled me with happiness peculiar to three year olds.

At barbecues he drank Ballantine and Pabst Blue Ribbon. He crushed the cans carelessly when he finished, throwing them in the big garbage pails provided just for that purpose. It was always sunny those days, in my memory.. He smoked cigars with the other men, they talked about baseball, and negotiated card games. Funny, these are the things I think of. Now that he eighty, these are the things I think of.

He sang. My father sang. he sang Unchained Melody as he mixed spackle in the paint pans, He sang Day-O as he rolled paint across the living room ceiling. He sang Irish ballads in the shower and camp songs while he was driving. I remember my father drinking beer and singing.

i realized, too, at forty that I had no passion left. Nothing makes me feel anything. As long as I have enough to eat and am warm and can pay my bills I wallow in quite a comfortable sea of complacency. Poetry ho longer comes easily to me, but I don't miss my pain. My pain threatened to do me in. Rehab took care of that. Rehab took care of pain, emotion and longing. I feel nothing now. I am in a calm sea of dead feelings.

Except when I think of my father dying. He is the one who put me in rehab, He is the one who wrestled me to the ground when I was out of control.

I don't know when the singing stopped, but the thought threatens me with an agony I don't want to know.

My father stopped drinking beer, stopped smoking, stopped singing. he can't hear very well anymore.

I want to go and sit with him, turn on the computer, type in Unchained Melody and lsiten to it with him. I want to do it before I get a phone call. I want to do it before he totally loses his hearing.

I want to go to some store that doesn't exist and somehow buy a can of Ballantine beer. Pop it with a can operner. Watch him drink it.

God, I want to hear my father sing. Unchained Melody. Day