A Poem About My Dead Dad
Something I wrote on our still-shared birthday
Two months ago, I turned 44. My dad would have turned 71 on the same day (he died in November 2016). Growing up, I always felt so cool telling people my dad and I shared the same birthday (albeit 27 years apart). It made up for the fact that my birthday is in August, which means I never got to have classroom cupcakes to celebrate.
I don’t think I’ll ever get used to not talking to or seeing him on our birthday, but this was the first year that I didn’t have a moment or two of deep sadness about it. Perhaps that’s because of time’s passing, or just that 2020 has been such an awful year that this personal pain point seems relatively minor (given all the things).
Anyway! I did think about him a lot on our birthday, and the days leading up to it. So I worked on finishing the poem below, which I first drafted on Father’s Day.
An alternative title is “Why Therapists Will Never Go out of Business.” Which maybe isn’t a bad thing, since I think therapy is essential — as are other steps we can take to improve or maintain our mental health.
Year to Year
Your absence settles in like dust,
filling in spaces I didn’t know existed.
Those tiny pieces of a life
settle on cold cobwebs,
which tangle me the most
on days when I think
I have us figured out.
When I think I’ve packed you away
into a perfect pyramid of boxes
in my mind.
21 June 2020
