They were so old it seemed that death had simply come too late and seeing them had turned and left and decided to stay away; that sawdust would always fill the air as my grandfather lathed and planed, his workshop alive to my child’s eyes, where anything could be made.
The world just made more sense to me back when they were alive, that whatever life threw at me, some things remained unchanged.
But in just six months they slipped away somewhere we can’t follow yet. Gone on ahead to their reward, their memory all that’s left.
When I think the dell is empty and the orchard’s fruit unpicked, that the pantry’s bare, the oven is cold and the workshop door is locked, that the bike I learned to ride is rusting in a shed, it’s hard to reconcile the fact that my childhood is dead.
Sad as I am that he’s gone, I’m glad for him in truth. Those longs nights alone, so sick with grief, crying out for mercy:
“Take my life.”
He’s the father that I wish I’d had, he’s the one I wish I could call ‘Dad’. And I only hope I can be the man he’d hope for me to be.
I haven’t been back to their home since the day I carried his coffin. The crickets are still screaming, but there are none of us left to hear them. There are none of us left. No, there are none of us left.