Saturday, December 11, 2010

Today, Tomorrow, and the Past

TODAY...would have been my Dad's 96th birthday. How I wish he had lived to see it. The photo is from 1932, and my Dad is the handsome Czechoslovakian on the right. On the left is his younger brother, my uncle.

He died June 7, 1994, after almost 5 years in a nursing home, suffering from the effects of multi-infarct dementia caused by mulitple strokes.

TOMORROW...would have been my younger son's 41st birthday. He and his Grandpa had some sort of special bond, being born 55 years and one day apart. He died (in a car crash in Poland, where he was redesigning pollution control systems) on Thanksgiving Day, November 28, 1996, at the tender age of being two weeks short of his 27th birthday.

THE PAST...comes to life, as do they both--these fine men--and the memories flow, unstoppable, as a river in flood.

In November of 1977, long before each died, I wrote this:

I am the dying:
Your closest friend
Mother
Brother
Aunt
Son

Conscious of your tears
Moistening this vanquished flesh.
Death's perpetual parade courses
Victorious over Life ephemeral.

I surrender:
At Christmas
Passover
Fourth of July
My birthday
Tomorrow
Today
Momentarily
I was:


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