For Bill...fondly

Remembering...this year, though often unaware, entangled in the present. A date etched in memory, "Oh yes, Bill's birthday."

Remembering...this year, hundreds of moments forming the timeless essence of you. Work shirts monogrammed with CFL, my first time ever inside a big rig parked in front of the house on Walnut Street, the scent of tobacco in the cab. Gruffness and caring, yes, I knew, I knew you cared.

Remembering...this year, the wrenching grief, the regrets...the if onlys, as you said good-bye to Nancy. We stumbled through; you lost your way. Stacks of unopened mail, soiled clothing, wilting vegetables from the loading dock...agonizing reminders of what was and what could never be again.

Remembering...this year, the joy...healed through a second love, whom we tried to accept. You blossomed and bloomed, living fully in that teeming city, with your Love, no longer lonely. We smiled when you visited, looking ten years younger, clad in sophistication, but the same old Bill.

Remembering...this year, the assurance you would watch over our little girl as she began college in Manhattan. How she loved reconnecting with a grand-dad always too far away. Such concern those first days , how you helped me move her in and showed us the city; your slacks slipping off your thin frame in the college elevator, your dentures clacking as we ate lunch, your inability to manage time restraints...sweet memories, all.

Remembering...this year, how we knew. We knew you were too thin, and that cough..we knew. All the phone calls, the prayers, the encouragement, while the big"C" stole you, painfully, away. Beckie trudged the city streets weeping, though she had spent hours by your side, and knew it was "only a matter of time."

Twelve years have come and gone, Bill. Would it please you to know we carry on? At moments you are alive in each of us when the spark of memory flames. Your son, almost your clone, carries valiantly on. The ragged tear in his soul filled with the scent of diesel fuel and a nightly cigar, identical to yours. Until I understood, I complained.
Only a touchstone they are,
a reaching for your hand across time...
and...
remembering.