The Words

My mother said, "Of course,

it may be nothing, but your father

has a spot on his lung."

May, 1955: My father

at fifty-one could never

speak of dreadful things without tears.

When I went back home,

I kissed his cheek, which was not our habit.

In a letter my mother

asked me not to kiss him again

because it made him sad.

In two weeks, the exploratory

revealed an inoperable

lesion.

The doctors never

told him; he never asked

but read The Home Medical Guidebook.

Seven months later,

just after his fifty-second birthday -

his hearing and eyesight going,

his voice reduced to whispers,

using a walker and a commode,

always coughing, three days

before he died-he said,

"If anything should happen to me... ."