Goodbye

[image from google]

The dogwood

are blooming

in this month

that you died,

as are

the flowering plum

and the rhodos

your wife

planted

with such care

in her happy middle years,

before Alzheimers,

before cancer.

You told me
that then

you did it all,

looked after her

and the house.

You tended her

as tenderly

as those blooms

for twenty years,

until she died

and you stayed on,

alone.

As you weakened,

I came

to tend you,

the evidence of

your fineness

everywhere,

most especially

in your son.

You were

living your life,

then you

were gone;

Presence,

a slow weakening,

and then Absence.

And now

the house

is bare,

stripped of

everything

you gathered

in your decades

of honorable,

simple
decent

living:

all your treasures,

the family photos

chronicling

life lived,

your favourite chair,
all gone.

I clean

the empty house.

Turn the lock.

Shut the door.

Goodbye.