i held his right hand
you held his left

on the night his spirit rose like vapor,
coalesced and rained down
on us and through our eyes

"don't forget"
he used to say
i made it my wedding vow, but
after his stroke he watched the video tape
with newly opened eyes, and said,
"i don't remember any of this."

we watched some baseball games
in those last days
one time sammy sosa golfed at two bad pitches
then doubled and got picked off second
"he's no good," dad said

then harry mentioned ripken's streak, and gehrig,
and dad's eyes glistened with the memory
of an immigrant kid sneaking onto the subway,
off at dawn to yankee stadium with the other waifs
to set up chairs in exchange for a chance to see that day's game -
a memory so real he had no words to convey it

i used to think that a life's end is a crapshoot
our grandmother in her final, beatific sleep
the morning after she helped us find four leaf clovers, or
the bottomless hell of the nurses snickering at us
shuffling up to the bedside of a dead junkie on life support

but we were with him
when a moment exposed itself
as an eternity
and he left us
with the last thing
that he had
to teach us

~ by Jim Netter ~

© 8/11/97 Jim Netter/RedBird Café. All rights reserved.
Unauthorized reproduction prohibited by all applicable laws.