Say Your Father Is Dying

And you find an unmarked box hidden in the basement. It’s been one year since your mother passed. What if you whisk the lid off, and instead of yet another stack of papers and receipts and insurance forms, you find black and white photos. The top one is of your father in his WWII War uniform: posing with a rifle, standing at attention, in front of his barracks in a warrior stance. What if another photo shows him sitting at a picnic table with his arms around a woman. What if several do. And you find his military gun record alongside foreign coins, a beret, an honorable discharge and a dog-eared soldier’s bible. Wedged in at the bottom of the box, you find a stack of onion-skinned air-mailed love letters bound with a red cord. That are not from your mother. That are signed love forever or XOX. With a lock of brown hair.

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Let’s say your father is lying in a hospital bed. You hold his dry hand in yours, his skin like parchment, his breathing stiff.  What if you had just a few hours, a few minutes, a few seconds to ask him who the woman was, whether he regrets any of the choices he made, which life he wished he lived—the one with her or the one that created you. What if you choose to read to him from the newspaper while he lies there slowly leaking life, you reciting the weather report, the local news, the obituaries. You might read him his horoscope as if there were a future to replace the past. But what if you read him his love letters instead. Would he remember them? Would you care? What if he squeezes your hand one last time. What might that mean: a memory, an acknowledgment, a sign of love? What if you will never know. Would you squeeze back?

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