The Poem I Read to My Dying Grandfather
He couldn't hear me. I read it anyway.
My grandfather was dying, and he could not hear me. The machines were doing the breathing for him, and the eyes were closed, and the room was the quiet kind of room where you know the person is still there but the person is already gone.
I read him a poem. Not a good poem, not the kind that wins contests, but the kind that comes out when you are trying to say the thing you have been meaning to say for years. I wrote about the way he held a fishing rod, the way he told a story, the way he laughed at his own joke before he finished it.
I read it out loud, the way you read to a person who can hear you, even though I knew he could not. The poem was not for him; it was for me. It was the thing I needed to say, the thing that needed to be said, the thing that could not be unsaid.
He died that night. The poem is in a frame on my desk, next to the photo of him holding a fish. The photo is the proof that he was there. The poem is the proof that I was.
I read it sometimes now, to myself, the way you read a poem to a person who is not there anymore. The poem is not about him; it is about the way he was. The poem is not about the death; it is about the life.
By Team Writory, for Writory.
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