Dad

 By: Karen Sylvia Rockwell

i.    it was at that moment    when I saw you looking so dapper in your coffin at the Heinz Funeral Home in Beverly Hills Florida    so far from your home    well    your house    in London Ontario    //    when my mother    (who had divorced you thirty-four years before)    said to my step mom    (who had just done a photo shoot of you in your thrift store yellow shirt like the one in the window when you were a teen that you wanted but never got    and your pale orange suit    also a last minute thrift store gem)    //    my mother said    he looks great!    If he wasn’t dead I’d go for him!    she could say that because my stepmom too had left you    sort of    living in separate houses for the last ten years    though she would bring you meals and serve them to you on big platters    and    when your sink was full    she would cart the dishes home in her car  

ii.    it was at that moment    when I thought    damn    you really do look good    //    I had forgotten what a handsome man you were    because even yesterday when I asked to see you    and they wheeled you out of the cold room into the hallway    and they pulled back the crisp white sheet to reveal your pale    pasty    swollen face    which I kissed because I felt I should    and I was curious    and at some level I wanted to kiss you good-bye    //    but even as I leaned in    I was repulsed by the feel of your clammy skin on my lips    and I secretly wanted to wash them long before I was able to    it was all I could focus on till the doctor finished whatever he was saying    I didn’t listen    I just wanted to find the nearest bathroom to wash off the germs/the diseases that could be     //    because    to be truthful    Dad    you were not a fan of water    it scares me    you used to say    //    since you almost drowned once   

iii.    it was at that moment    when the guilt hit me    not for you almost drowning    I wasn’t born yet    but for not listening    not caring    mostly because it didn’t matter    //    I saw you dying  long before this    at the hospital weeks before how you smiled a faint smile and let us run you in your wheel chair   laughing    (us    not you)     and put Santa slippers on your abscessed feet    //    and how    with that same almost smile and that blank expression    you pulled the finger of the     stuffed Santa I brought you    which farted    and said Ho Ho Ho that’s a stocking stuffer    much like you used to do    only you said    excuse you!    as you pointed a finger and blamed your farts on me    //    but you didn’t laugh yesterday like you did then

iv.    it was at that moment    when I realized you weren’t blaming me or anyone now     were you Dad?    for the farts or the abscesses or the leavings of your wives    or of any of your seven children    //    though you did lay a guilt trip once     on your second son    you’ll never leave me   will you?    you said to his tearful nine-year-old face as he promised you    no Daddy    after the third of your first five had gone back to live with our mother    //    (I didn’t count because I was a teen and living my own life by then    planning my escape which involved none of my four parents)    //    but then he did leave    that second son    but that was long ago    and anyway    he made up for it by singing Old Rugged Cross at your graveside

v.    it was at that moment    when I stopped to think on how long    really    you had already been dead    //    here we were gathered    all of us    to send you off because the body you inhabited   but never knew what to do with    how to care for    had finally caught up to your spirit    which had abandoned you long ago    //    ten years ago already I said to you    Dad    what are you doing with your life?    its like you are waiting around    till you kick    I joked    and you just shrugged    that would be nice    //    at some level I knew you meant it    but then I thought    that’s Dad being dramatic    like you were when you told us you got an orange for Christmas and that you wanted that yellow shirt for years and that you walked ten miles to school with bare feet in the snow    //    and I remember later thinking how horribly faded that shirt must have gotten in that window and that    hey wait   you grew up in California

vi.    it was at that moment    when I wondered who you really were    Dad    and if there were    any clues at all    //    my aunt says you went to church while living with her that year but that you didn’t belt out    Holy Holy Holy    in the choir like you did when I was a kid    and I was half hiding in my pew     half embarrassed by your enthusiasm    half proud of you    //    but there were those years in between when you taught me to question    believe nothing you hear and only half of what you see   //     those years of you toying with the young Elders of the Latter Day Saints church    inviting them to dinner    posing challenges they would have to go home and look up    //    the decade of you collecting degrees    the Master of English    and of library science    the Ph.D. in philosophy    minus the logic course you took several times but couldn’t pass    //    what was that about    Dad?    you   who served your country’s military for 20 years in the Intelligence branch

vii.    it was at that moment    when I knew that your heart was broken    wasn’t it Dad?    as if it always had been    and your brain was all you had    //    I always said you were like a brain in a body that was foreign to you    like you were from another world    you were always talking about life after death    //    you got a Ph.D. in metaphysics over the Internet    the name of your thesis    ANDER: Afterlife    Near Death Experiences    and Reincarnation    //    I looked for you once Dad    in the spring    after your death    I said    okay Dad    here I am    where are you?

viii.    it was at that moment    when I looked up and saw you    a moth in a cocoon    in the crease of my decaying patio umbrella    and I laughed out loud at your eternal lethargy   //    the full length of the couch had been your throne    you would yell at us from there    and we were scared of you    //    and then    when I was a teen    I remember telling you how pissed off I was    that you had made me afraid    that you were just a soft marshmallow    really    in more ways than that with your protruding belly    always bare    and your Bermuda shorts    I see you    scratching yourself up the leg of them    as you lay stretched out on your side    head propped on one arm

ix.    it was at that moment    when I was there again    standing bravely in front of you on our olive green carpet    and you with the belt in your free hand    and me trying to decide    hard    medium    or soft?   it was the game you played with us    you called it    mad belter   //    you knew I would say    hard    out of pride    out of challenge    you always stalled    are you sure?   and I would laugh out my nervous yes    and you would deliver a stinging blow    and we would    both cry    and you would say    with sympathy    you asked for it honey    you shouldn’t ask for hard if you can’t take it 

x.    it was at that moment    when I knew you couldn’t take it either    could you    Dad?    //    like the time you were standing there    leaning on the kitchen sink    looking out into our back yard    sobbing    I can feel its pain    in reference to the frozen maple tree    as its limb    heavy with ice ripped from its trunk    //    and    while I felt it too    I hated that I did    //    until the moment when I held my first child and I called you from my hospital room to say    I understand

**Dad was first published as the National Poetry Month feature at Morel South&West at www.morelmag.ca in April 2016.

Karen Sylvia Rockwell is an award winning poet/writer, mom of six, Gaie of two, living in Belle River, Ontario with her lesbian partner of 20 years. Curious Connections, her flash fiction chapbook, was released by Urban Farmhouse Press in 2016. Karen’s poetry appears in Room; The Windsor Review; The Saving Bannister; Deep Water Literary Journal; offSIDE; The Grief Diaries; Napalm and Novocain; Vanessa Shields’s Poetry On Demand, vol.2, and is featured in anthologies by Cranberry Tree Press; Black Moss Press; The Ontario Poetry Society; Polar Expressions Publishing; Ascent Aspiration; Kind of a Hurricane Press, Solarwyrm Press and Womanspirit. Read more about Karen at www.karerock.com.