driving home
from the hospital
this same vision
of my father on a white sand beach
young and handsome in the summer sun

My father is in the hospital again. He fell in the bathroom early Thursday morning,was knocked unconscious and taken by ambulance. He fractured both his neck and his pelvic bone. So here we go again. David asked me this morning how I slept last night, and I was ashamed to answer "good"; maybe it was because of all the emotions or just knowing that my father was in good hands, or maybe because for the first time in more than the two weeks since he came home from rehab, I didn't have to sleep with an ear pressed to the floor. Whatever it was, I felt quite guilty to have slept at all when my father is laying once again in the hospital in pain. I started crying and wondering where we went wrong, how this could have happened and what I could have done to prevent it.

This poem comes from this re-occuring vision of my father on Good Harbor beach, in his swim trunks, head full of dark curly hair, tanned and wearing sun glasses. It is this picture of youth and vitality that keeps coming to me, this memory of a time when life seemed simple and safe and really perfect in many ways. I am just so sad to see my father lose his youth and with it so many other things we take for granted; like our smooth skin, our dark hair, our spry legs, our clarity of mind, and that feeling that we have so many endless sunny days ahead of us. In this vision of my father, he is younger than I am today. Ah, this letting go of people and of ourselves is such an ongoing process. But I'm trying hard to keep myself in the moment where joy is always stirring.