When my father died...

June 4, 2023

When my father died,
a wall that stood forever crumbled.
Every room across the universes
was forced to adjust.

About When my father died…

When my father died is a poem that came to me in the shower. A lot of ideas do that. They find room to pop up when the spray of water drowns out distractions.

Dad was a force to be reckoned with, a quiet powerful figure who took whatever he had to on his shoulders and held it. For as long as he lived.

A farm boy knocked for a loop by polio at 13 in 1932, he loved sports but never ran again. He fished and played croquet but watched the New York Met with equal enthusiasm.

What you need to know about my father to understand this poem is that adversity never made him fall. He held up, and the rest of the world needed his example.

In their short marriage, Dad and Mom had five children. I was the fourth boy before my sister finally broke the pattern.

Less than five years after my sister’s birth, Mom left us, and my father suddenly became the first “single Dad” we ever heard of.

The loneliness and other sacrifices he must have weathered will never be known because Dad never broke down or blamed anyone.

Dad was a rock, and five successful children have not forgotten.