I
Do
You were the bravest person I
knew.
You just…
never gave up.
You spent your dying breath
telling me, that you were gonna get through this, that you would
never stop fighting, for me.
Not
yourself…
but for me.
I can still remember the
smell of your rotting socks on our bedroom floor;
a smell I thought, I’d
never come to miss.
I can feel your rough,
calloused, hands holding me, as you picked me up after I fell
down and skinned my knee.
“Do you remember, Dad?
When you kissed it and made it better?”
I really miss your blueberry
pancakes every Sunday morning.
I still use your
recipe.
But they never taste the way
yours did.
I could never figure out how
you mixed your secret recipe into the batter.
But I never forgot it.
It’s love.
Right?
“Remember the day you
told me you were sick, but my ‘love’ would be enough
to cure you?”
I made you pancakes that
day.
I still have all your old
things.
The nurses from the hospital
even let me keep that shy wisp of your hair that we cut off,
before you lost it.
And that picture?
The one of our last standing
hug, just after Doctor Morehouse made you change into your
gown?
It’s still on my
nightstand…
along with Goodnight
Moon.
I read it every night just
before I go to bed, like you used to, so I wouldn’t get
nightmares.
But I still can’t find
the mouse.
I relive that day in the ICU,
everyday when I look in the mirror and see that slim, silver,
scar, just above my eyebrow, from when I fought through the
nurses to break in and see you.
Your body was rejecting the
radiation. They wouldn’t let me in.
But I was so scared. So
desperate. I thought I was gonna lose you. If you could just here
my voice…
I remember when the doctors
told me that I should take you home, and make you
comfortable.
I started crying.
That was a week after the
chemo failed.
But you held me and told me
that it would be alright, that you were still gonna make
it…
“But do you
remember our last night together? When I curled up beside you,
and read you Goodnight Moon?”
You never got to tell me
where the mouse was.
“But do you
remember?”
…I
do.
colieeatsunicorns · 1 decade ago
0
reply
this is really beautiful.