Empty Chair Around the Dining Table

It is Sunday night, love, and I am thinking about you. It is more that thinking about you, I am with you. In a few days it is Easter, and kids will be egg hunting, like you and your brother once did. It is raining, and it is cold.

I was watching a program about people helping people. A town where people came to the help of a family with two disabled kids. A town where people stayed positive even when they were losing their own homes. A town where people did not want to accept.

And I thought about you. I recalled the days when in the Intensive Unit, you were giving hope to another girl with burns on most of her body. You knew you were not going to make it, but you kept on telling her she will be ok. You knew you had a few days left, yet you talked to her all night long telling her how sweet life can be. We received a card from her a few months after you were not with us anymore. Her mother wrote how much help you were to her daughter.

… I am thinking about you, as I see the disabled children find a way to be alive. To be accepting and going along. You did not. You left this world within a month, from a vibrant, beautifully 12 year old, to a cold body I kissed for a long time, in the cold room. It was not fair. It was not what I had expected to do. It was not what you were supposed to be.

But you had no choice. And I am thinking about you. As I type these lines, I see you in every click, in every painful thought I have of you.

And suddenly, I felt like a bit of calm. Not joy, as I have rarely been joyful since I cried when we descended you to that cold hole. I have rarely been happy, rarely been simple. But tonight, I am watching the story of a struggling single mother with two disabled children. And I am thinking about your brother who is also struggling. But I am wondering…. I am wondering how our lives you made better during your short years. How your life would have been if we had not decided to end your pain. It has changed the world for us. I know I am not the same. Never will be. You taught me to be who I never was, yet you knew I could be. Do not know how you knew. But That decision was not who I thought I was -- I still wake up at night wondering…

I am thinking about you, as I always do. But tonight I am tired. And I am vulnerable. Tonight I am thinking how it would be to have you around the dining room table; how it would be to wake you in the morning; to kiss you goodnight. I do not know, and I will never know. Yet I do think about these things everyday. I am very, very grateful we had the ”father-daughter” night a few months before you fell ill. You were radiant! We danced for the first time together. It was awkward for you, I know. But it was the first time. And it was the last time.

So, I will watch kids hunt for eggs. I will say to myself that years ago I was one of those proud fathers who took pictures of you with a basket full of eggs. That today, I visit you next to a granite headstone.

I am tired tonight, love. As tired as a man can be missing your smile, your fears, your awkward teenage years. I did not see you happy fighting the disease—I saw you calm and accepting. I recall the long nights when you talked non-stop to the girl who shared your room in the Intensive Care Unit. The girl who was burned over most of her body. Yet you told her how sweet life was. Knowing that you will be out of that picture in a few days.

I am thinking about you tonight, love. And that makes me happy. And that makes me very sad.

March 28, 2010

Ani Maria

Morning dew holds its drops
From dreams the unmoon night
Had kept
In your name

I walk silent and cold
To a granite stone
Shaped as a tear
In your smile

A robin hops
From fallen leaf to leaf
And in the wet dirt
Looks for that dream

I have come to cheer
Near a stone shaped in tear
The fear of losing you
Again

To the morning dew
That holds its drops
As I hold you dear
As I keep you near

To my days without you


March 23, 2010