A Vigil for My Father

We keep watch so love has company in the dark.

West on I-88

I. Westbound

West on I-88,

the hills lean close,

fog stitched along their backs

like something unfinished.

The river drags its metal voice

beneath bridges he once drove me over

when the world felt permanent.

Now the miles unfurl in tense,

stuttering frames...

a reel I’ve seen before

but never with this kind of weight.

A hawk drops into a field

and doesn’t rise.

The absence lands in my chest.

I drive faster.

Summer air pours through the window;

loam, diesel, heat,

but none of it fills the space

already bracing

for what waits at home.

II. Town Limits

Elmira breaks through the windshield

before the sign does -

a strange tilt in the light,

maples bowing as if

they’ve heard the news.

Porch lights bloom

on Hamilton, Water, Church,

glowing like candles

left burning on purpose.

The laundromat hums its old blue hum,

too faithful to change.

The bakery’s radio murmurs baseball,

the same cracked voice

that narrated my childhood summers.

The streets guide me inward

with a familiarity

I haven’t earned in years.

Each turn feels like a question

I can’t answer yet.

III. 812

The house stands steady,

fifty years of his hands

in every beam, every wall,

each room shaped and reshaped

until it felt like safety.

We moved the hospital bed

into the living room weeks ago,

the room with little light,

the room he remade three times

because he wanted things right.

Six, seven weeks we kept shifts:

my brother through the nights,

my sister with her cool cloth,

my cousin counting meds,

Mom refusing to sleep

because love taught her

that vigilance is a form of tenderness.

The air is thick

with varnish, rain,

and the faint sweetness

that gathers near the end.

He hasn’t opened his eyes in days,

but still we speak...

small reassurances meant more

for our own unsteady hearts.

I take his hand.

It’s warm still,

but the warmth feels borrowed.

Nights slip by

in the rhythm of breaths -

there,

then not there -

until the last one comes,

soft as a shift in weather

you don’t notice

until it’s already changed.

The room he built

receives him quietly.

It is the only silence

we are not prepared for.

None of us moves first.

IV. After 

Night presses down fast -

the way it did each evening

when we stepped outside

just to steady ourselves.

A train mourns through the valley,

a long, low note

that refuses to pretend.

We sit on the porch -

Mom, my sister, my brother, my cousin, me -

each of us holding exhaustion

like an object we haven’t learned

how to set down.

Moths circle the porch light,

blind, relentless.

Inside, the living room waits

in its new stillness -

his tools untouched in the basement,

his work everywhere

but him.

The house exhales.

For the first time in weeks,

we do too,

though it feels disloyal

to breathe this easily.

Down the street

a single window brightens,

then dims,

someone ending their day

the way he ended a life.

And standing in the dark,

I finally understand:

I didn’t come home

to say goodbye.

I came home

to carry him across

the last room

he ever made,

and to learn how to live

in the echo he left behind.

In the days after, our grief kept circling back

to the room where we stood together...

the room he shaped board by board, year by year,

and the room that held him as he slipped away.

His Last Room

He lay in the room

he built with his own hands...

walls he sanded smooth,

a ceiling he repainted

each time life scuffed it.

We pushed the furniture aside

to fit the hospital bed.

He apologized for the trouble

even then.

Nights blurred:

my brother’s quiet pacing,

my sister’s soft voice,

my cousin measuring pills,

Mom watching his face

as if the act itself

could hold him here.

Sometimes he breathed

like he was testing the air.

Sometimes he didn’t.

The clock on the wall

ticked its useless rhythm.

We timed everything

by the rise and fall

of his chest.

When the last breath came,

it wasn’t dramatic.

No shudder,

no warning,

just a small exhale

as if he were letting go

of one more thing

he’d meant to fix.

The room held him.

Then it let him go.

And the five of us

stood there,

in the place he’d spent a lifetime making,

trying to understand

how a man who built everything

could leave

so quietly.

GBS jr

2024