Missing My Dad…

Yesterday would have been my father’s 86th birthday.  Every once in a while when I call my mother I get my father’s voice on her answering machine; I’ve gotten to the point in my grief that my heart jumps with a smile instead of it shaking and jarring me. I’m glad my mother hasn’t changed it but I sure wish there was more. What I would give for more. My nephew gave him a tape recorder for his birthday a few years ago so my father could record his stories, but he never used it. I really wish he had.

The old phone message

survives;

I hang on the too short fragment

of your voice,

waiting,

longing for more,

unable to speak.

The silence that follows,

abrupt,

sharp,

final.

Beep.