My father shared his love of the Appalachian mountains and all the beauty of the natural world surrounding us constantly. He said we lived in the most beautiful place in the world. As a young adult he and I would drive the mountain roads together and gather morel mushrooms, we picked water lettuce, and he shared stories of the mountain men and women who lived in the home places we passed that fell in disrepair years before. He taught me to how to identify sassafras and wild ginseng. We would squeal in happiness when the trillium and mountain laurel bloomed. I ate the ramps he dug along the cold streams of the Spring from the moment I could eat solid foods. My father split every piece of firewood that heated our home. He was incredibly strong well into his sixties. He continued to order an entire logging truck full of logs and chopped and stacked the woodsheds full until his final year. The year of the brain cancer diagnosis. The reality of the impending loss of someone you love is heavy. Witnessing the man who was once so strong become a wizened skeleton hits hard. When you learn that there are only a few days remaining it is impossible to process.

I wrote a few poems during this time that I want to share. Rereading them returns me to that moment in time. The words are raw and real. The depth of the grief is equal to the depth of the love.

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Still cold air

A blue jay call

I sit at the round oak table

Waiting

Mangoes

The morning sky splits open

the color of mangoes

Near the end

I fed you mango smoothies 

from a straw

Father

I feel so alone without you