Sailing

For my dad.

 

Today is my father’s birthday. He would be 96.

He died of pancreatic cancer in 2014, and I found this poem for him:

As the bird trims her to the gale,
I trim myself to the storm of time,
I man the rudder, reef the sail,
obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime:
“Lowly faithful, banish fear,
right onward drive unharmed;
the port, well worth the cruise, is near,
and every wave is charmed.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I’m not certain he heard me read it to him in those final days of his life. He was mostly unconscious, somewhere within himself, doing the hard work of dying.

THIS is a picture of my dad with his dog, Benjamin, taken a few months before his death.

I miss him especially today.

And so I say again, “I love you, dad. Banish fear, right onward drive unharmed; your port, well worth the cruise, is near, and every wave is charmed.”