Death comes in threes…
My nana’s old world superstition
A person you would never anticipate
To pass away before their time
Three years since, last time we spoke
My Father’s wake,
Respects he paid
Conspicuous in his Navy dress blues
His dark-haired wife, slender, poised,
His bashful blue-eyed daughter
Biting her lip, holding fast to his hand
Unwilling to let go
Boyhood friend
Misspent youth
Misadventures in dark graveyards
Sharing a six pack of Budweiser
Stolen from the old man’s supply in the basement
Sprawled on his family’s burial plot
Halloween – 1979 - muttered incantations
Trying to conjure spirits that would not be recalled
Relishing the thrill of fright
Did we see demons in the dark?
Or was it just imagination run amok
Bleary-eyed, stumbling over the roots,
In the darkness, entangled,
In the brambles undetected
Trying to find our way home in the murk
Death held no terror for us then
We said good-bye and went
Our separate ways
Twenty years of time elapsed
Your service in the Navy soon to end
A seizure on a morning in May
Tumbling down a flight of stairs
An MRI, the doctor’s prognosis, inoperable
Loss of control, tremors, paralysis
The state of your future days
You choose the hour of your ending
Your service revolver did the deed
Returning to the hilltop graveyard
A place without fear long ago
The bugle plays taps
The honor guard folds the flag
The gasps of your family,
With each blast of the gun salute
As the soldier presents the flag
Into the hands of the dark-haired wife
His blue-eyed daughter clutching
Her mother’s hand unwilling to let go
I walk back to the car, the service is concluded
Faltering steps over, twisted tree roots
Prominent in the glare of day