...in a field we could not reach

Sometimes a poem provides an explanation, an insight, a shared comfort that science can not.  This is one of those. 

My Father, Dying

by Joyce Sutphen

It was hard work, dying, harder
than anything he’d ever done.

Whatever brutal, bruising, back-
breaking chore he’d forced himself

to endure—it was nothing
compared to this. And it took

so long. When would the job
be over? Who would call him

home for supper? And it was
hard for us (his children)—

all of our lives we’d heard
my mother telling us to go out,

help your father, but this
was work we could not do.

He was way out beyond us,
in a field we could not reach.

 

From the Writers Almanac, June 1, 2017

Comments

[Heidi Sue]

heartachingly beautiful. thank you for sharing.

[kathleeen]

So beautiful, and so very true. As I sat with my mother in the last days/hours/minutes of her life, I finally thought:
"This is so much like the labor of birth"
Thank you Carol, for this.

[Barbara Tarbox]

Achingly reasonant.