"Same. Smaller. Quieter."
That's how my daughter described her dad when I inquired how he was doing yesterday then, this afternoon, to the same question she wrote,
"He died this morning.
About an hour ago." I wish he'd lived a happier life but his death was not as lonely as it might have been—she was sitting beside him—had been all morning—nor was it particularly sad, coming as it did after a long illness, cancer not covid.
So . . . yesterday afternoon as the nest full of baby birds under the roof tiles chirped away at the top of their shrill little voices, and I was painting an illustration for one of my poems while listening to music with headphones on, Gary dropped in from America to say good-bye. He was wispy and floating and mostly transparent (imagine something between a whitish horizontal veil-like form with flagella and a thin floating, mostly transparent sea creature) and kind of stand-offish as always, but he was there.¹ My eyes got blurry for a bit but I saw him clearly in my mind's eye . . . he in thin air, me in afternoon light, us remembering what our dreams had been back then
(did he chortle?) and who we'd been for each other. We forgave each other. He lingered a few moments more then said good-bye.
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| Portugal . . . about an hour ago . . . |
¹·
No. I wasn't stoned or drunk nor do I claim this moment to be a "Fact". Just sharing my subjective experience.
