The material presented
here is not Al-Anon Conference Approved Literature. It is a method
to exchange
information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal
level.
My dad died in Feb. 2002, during the ice storm that winter. It was if the wrenching of his soul from this earth was so dramatic that the trees cracked as the storm raged on, while his life blood slipped from this earth. This poem is in dedication to my dad.
Family Tree
Dad is still with me. I feel him still in the early moring hours. I feel him in the call of the whipperwill.
I sit alone each evening and watch the sunset ebb. I think of the love not said. Then I think of the love shown.
I see him walking in the pastures. I see him driving his tractor in the fields. I see him bent over picking weeds out of his garden.
His spirit is still here. His blood runs through my veins and that of my daughter. My mom sees her love for her husband shown through her love for her child. I stand with my hands on my hips, talking to the farmers as my dad did before me, with my little mimicker by my side, his granddaughter. As the grandmother sees the picture unfold before her, she is reminded of her husands stance and grace, echoed in her child and grandchild.
Someday the torch will be passed on, for the grandchild of the farmer, loves the farm as he did. "I have a right to grow up on this farm as you did mom, and grandfather did," the little tyke says! Someday I will see her standing obstanitely resolute in her thinking and love of the farm, fighting for it as her grandfather and her mother before her. And I will love her with the same love that remembers the blood that runs through her veins comes from the family tree of the man who first loved me.
Carolena, I'd be pleased for you to share the poem with your neighbor. That's what I was hoping posting the poem would do, help others this Father's Day, that had lost their dad's recenlty. it helped me writing it.
