Conversations with Daddy

 Conversations with daddy

Daddy

It’s time to say bye

I have prepared all my life

For this moment.  

Fearful, procrastinating 

Willing, praying

Hoping for this moment

To find itself flung far far into the distance.

Daddy

I knew the day you would be gone. 

I knew the day I left you

The many choices I made

Choosing myself 

And not choosing you. 

I was afraid to hurt you daddy

To let you down again.

You, who saw in me,

So much of your own success

So many of your ambitions 

So much of your courage 

I couldn’t bear to show you my pain daddy

And somewhere, I couldn’t bear to watch yours

So I created this distance 

A pandemic and a thousand miles between us 

Something to blunt the intimacy

To build some walls 

So it would be easier for me 

To let you go

And easier for you

To go, knowing I was safe.  

Daddy,

I over prepared for this moment.

When I would never hear your voice again

Never see that big smile light up your face again

Never know that someone in the universe cared so much

For how long my hair was or how bright my clothes

Never feel your feet again

Your dark skin, chaffed – scaly from the dry winters 

Your hands – once strong, that would always beat me 

Now weakened by time, limp, barely there 

Daddy

I watched you extinguish

Day by day I saw you become weaker

But never once did I see a smaller man

Your kindness and love outshone everything daddy

Your heart, oh your ever-loving heart 

Your magical heart that cared for everyone

That was large enough to encompass the world 

After you left, I am amazed daddy

At how large a life you lived

And how many thousands found refuge in you

Your unbounded, seamless, limitless heart

Daddy

As I finally met the sea this week

My usual conversations with the sea 

turned into conversations with you 

I finally accepted daddy, that you are absent 

That I have to eventually say a goodbye

That I have to stop finding you in spiritual ways 

And accept that you are gone.  

I have to reconcile that I was not there with you in the end

You went alone daddy

I am so deeply sorry I chose myself

You told me I was the pillar of this family

And I have to take care of them all

I was so afraid of letting you down daddy

I knew you could see through every wall I built around us

And stare into my grief 

I didn’t want you to go through that pain daddy

It took me a very very long time to find my peace 

And an excruciating amount of rebuilding 

In an lonely isolated time

When the walls closed in, silences loomed large

With the disease all around us. 

Daddy

In the end, it got you.

All of it did.

Your heart, your blood, your kidney and your lungs

We fought a long hard battle on each

But then one day, you told me you had enough

You were fatigued and tired with the poking and prodding

With the injections and the drugs and the transfusions

With looking for the yellow through the red

You told me you were done

And I felt it would be easier on you to go

We agreed this was the way

I found the courage in me

To find the kindness for you

We both knew the time was here 

And the truth would meet us soon

As hard as we fought

As much as we won

We knew we would eventually lose

To this order of the universe

To this agency of life we own for such a brief transient period

That we would one day have to give up.  

Daddy,

As I walked by the beach

I made some promises to you. 

Now the sea breeze is mixed up with you 

It no longer is just me and the cosmos at the sea 

You are now omnipresent daddy

In all my silences

In all my meditation

In all my oneness with the world

I often wonder what part of you remains daddy

Is it the values you left me with?

Or the memories of our shared time?

Or is all of me just an extension of you?

And as I accept this notion of something you

I start to think about your large legacy daddy

While you may be gone, I want to preserve all of you 

Your values, you work, your people

As an inheritor of you, I want to keep all your ideas alive

And have them inhabit this complex universe in different forms

Some through art, some through eco systems

And some through creating a fulcrum of kindness and values

In whatever extensions I may create.  

Daddy

I will take care of Amma

Your other daughters and grandchildren

I will preserve and publish your poems

But more importantly, nurture more poets

I will create a place for the arts 

As you always taught me daddy, 

the experience of the arts

Is among the largest experiences of humanity

And I will strive to do the work I began

To create a more just world

One which includes everyone

The one you believed in.

Daddy

A month before you died,

You said to me 

that the apple does not fall far away from the tree

Daddy, I miss your shade

The one that protected me from everything

But life has been a blessing

And the world has been giving

I am experiencing magic everyday daddy

And I will keep creating it for you.

Daddy, 

I hope you are in peace

While I am still here

doing your work.

I will find you again

In many different forms

Until then,

Good bye.