The Hardest Punch.
A father and a son, estranged,
Kept via oceans, faraway;
No joy or misery exchanged;
Of hopes and fears, they’d nought to say;
By stubbornness or pride restrained;
Familial love was kept at bay.
Communication had they not,
Yet still they quarrelled all the same;
Imagining an arrow shot,
In anger, disappointment, blame,
And in their minds, they each forgot,
Regret, humiliation, shame.
The father, whom he once held dear,
Was by the son, remembered now,
As but a tyrant, wielding fear.
The son, on having failed to flower;
The fruit of loins did not appear,
Hence all his father’s dreams turned sour.
And then ill-tidings reached the son:
His father, in a hospice bed
Resided, and was nearly done;
Aggressive cancer having spread
Into his organs, every one,
And very shortly, he’d be dead.
The son, with haste, arranged a flight,
Over the oceans, faraway;
Arriving in the dead of night;
(And thankfully, without delay),
Fatigued, yet wide awake in spite;
He viewed his father, with dismay.
Muttering in hesitation,
He offered an apology;
Waited in anticipation;
Wondering: would his father be
Capable of conversation;
Could he even speak, hear, or see?
If angry words, like punches are
By recipients, harshly felt;
The hardest punch of all, by far,
Is surely from a deathbed dealt;
Would he receive a mental scar?
What words within his father dwelt?
His father soothed him with a smile:
“It really doesn’t matter now;
How are you son? It’s been a while”:
Hence both within that final hour
Did effortlessly reconcile;
All grievances forgot somehow.
Awareness, from the old man’s face,
Appeared to turn itself within,
Regarding there a final place:
Oblivion; where death therein,
Obliterating time and space,
Pulls all our fearful spirits in.
Henceforth, he struggled inwardly;
Terror, simultaneously,
Appeared with joyful ecstasy,
Confronting the reality;
The inescapabilty:
Death approaching, imminently…
Then angels, to his deathbed flew;
On having led his son away,
They hid the dying man from view,
As breathing stopped and death held sway;
Turned off machines, by where he lay,
And saw his final moments through.
The curtain hence drawn back, the son
Approached his father, ever- dear,
And though the old man’s life was done,
His blissful smile made amply clear:
Joy and eternal peace had won:
Death’s not at all a thing to fear.
A father and a son estranged,
Were finally united by
Acknowledgement and truth exchanged,
Upon a father’s last goodbye:
Though life his son he never trained,
Yet still; he showed him how to die.
