Daddy left on a cold and harsh day.

It was February…

Susie left us on a cool and dry day.

It was November…

It feels unreal, as if we do not exist, anymore.

To explain his fact of life called death.

Daddy was expected to some degree.

Susie just turned 20-years-old.

I once saw her … a vision in an old woman on the train.

It was Susie, if she were in her seventies.

An age she’d never see.

She was wrinkled, only a bit.

The woman on the train.

Saggy, large eyes…worn face.

When Susie, only 17 years was diagnosed with cancer…

Under her left eye …

Re-diagnosed…

She had the same thing at age 5.

Perhaps, Susie always had old eyes…

… a look that children with cancer get.

A knowing or maturity…we cannot understand.

As they are brave souls … old souls,

before they are old.

Maybe.

Daddy was old forever, of course.

But when the cancer came …

he got older, still.

Cancer brings old eyes …

at least, the terminal kind.

The face gets grayish.

Maybe it’s just sadness.

Or, eventually, letting go of this lifetime.

Then, just this one day, in August. Ideally, and suddenly.

There was light! From them who had crossed?

They lead me to him. Alive, healthy!

He danced and he sang for me!

He did not know it was for me …

or did he?

He came out, with life in his step!

He was fast and the air was on fire …

that passionate fire!

We connected, almost literally …

Like the fire in his very soul …

His forward motion was quick . . .

I pushed myself off the wall, holding me up!

And I intercepted him in the middle of the room.

When he grabbed me

… for the picture.

That hard grab was strong

…yet gentle at the right moment.

Passionate and held me up,

as I swooned in him embrace.

Life became real, again!

I existed!

I came alive!

 

NOTE: In 1987 my father died on February 4th, and my young friend, Susie died in November. As Susie was on her  death bed — on August 28th — I met my favorite actor, Tim Curry. This is the actual photograph.