All that was left
By the end of his life
Was just, you know
Memory and love
That was sort of the chronology
Of how we’d interact
Towards the, you know
Towards the end
He’d tell us about something that happened
And that would remind him
About something else
And then something else
And then he’d just, you know, want to hug us
Or just, you know, because he was frail
Just grab a hand
And hold it
We started talking about it--
Me and my brother
We started talking about it
Like it was a pattern
We’d say it’s
Memory
Memory
Memory
Love
Because that was the sort of order
And it was, uh, it was nice
I mean, our dad was gone
For an intents and purposes
Our dad was, uh, no more
Not in the way
That we, uh, remembered him
But our dad also never talked
About anything that ever happened to him
He didn’t share memories
Not at all
And so we were sort of getting to know
This--this new person
This version of the person we knew
And that was--
I mean, we were still sad
But it was also
Sort of beautiful
If you just, you know
Let it be beautiful
You learn how to let a lot of things be
When you go through something like that
You have to learn to just, uh
Let go of--well, everything
But Dad taught us how to do that
Because he was--
He was like how we are
Which makes sense
Control freaks raise control freaks, right?
And then he lost his, uh, ability to--uh, uh--
Be that
And we had to lose our, uh--
So we just let him talk
We let him tell us
All his memories
All in three’s
Like dead celebrities
One memory
Then another
Then a finisher
Finally he’d say ‘I love you’
And, uh, we’d say ‘I love you too, Dad’
Then we’d have to tell him
Who we were
It was, uh....
Well it was really a humbling experience, I would say
But we found out all these wonderful things
And uh, it was important to us
To, uh, really lock those things
Into our brain
As some way of, of--preserving him
Our father
We wrote a bunch of them down
And then we’d write down, you know--
Dad doesn’t know how old he is
Dad doesn’t know that Mom’s gone
Dad doesn’t know we haven’t lived in Denver for six years
All the things he didn’t know, but--
It never stopped him
From finishing with--
‘I love you’
It’s not a way I would wish for anyone to live, but--
I guess if the end of your life is all about
Memories and love
Then--
Well there are worse things, aren’t there?
There are worse ways
To be
At the end
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