On My Father Dying

I.
My father had small feet.
I only realized this after he had died,
When I tried on his shoes,
Part of his legacy of clothing.

II.
At my father's unveiling,
The headstone was a double one.
The left side said "Loving Husband, Father, and Grandfather,"
The right side was blank.
After the prayers, after the rocks and pebbles had been placed on the headstone,
his half of it,
As people were leaving,
I asked my mother,
Didn't it make her fearful,
That blank side of the stone?
Didn't it make her feel that the ground was waiting?
She looked up at me and said, with peace in her face and her soft voice,
No.
And I remembered that when my father died,
The first thing she did was to buy a new bed.
I'm sure she slept on the right side of it,
Leaving the left side blank.

11/12/93

©Martin Jukovsky

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