When you died it was your hands that got me.

Your kidneys failed.

Your hands swelled up.

Those were never your hands.

They were your hands

But they were never your hands.

I held them tight, in the moment

For letting go. I had to learn then

To let you go.

 

When all you had to do to save yourself

Was sit in the chair,

Don’t move,

Ring your bell if you need to move

And we’ll help you, but with your compulsion

You stood up

Time after time,

For the door, for the toilet, a surge for any sudden urge,

And it was standing the last time that made you fall,

Falling broke your hip, breaking your hip

Killed you. I had to learn then

To let you be impulsive. To let you stand.

 

When you shit yourself the first time

At 3 in the morning

And your alarm went off

And I found you there on the floor

Diarrhoea down your legs and up your back

And I washed you in the shower

And you laughed and laughed,

The first time I didn’t find it funny

Not the least little bit.
A carer shouldn't be angry. A carer shouldn't
Shudder at the task. I shuddered. At first.

But by the hundredth, sure, I had to learn then

To find it funny too.

 

When you choked near to death over your food

And had a pipe inserted into your belly,

Fed liquid through a tube, that strange mouth

At your centre suckling a plastic teat,

When you lost all power of speech

And I forgot your singing voice

And your catchphrases and jokes

And your canny knack for avoiding direct questions

Or any talk of feelings, I had to learn then

To listen to the language of your eyes,

A language of hands and thumbs.

I had to learn to speak for you.

 

When they diagnosed you, when they told me you’d die,

I had to learn the death sentence was not for me.

I had to learn, selfish child, this was not about me.

If I had known then all that would happen

All that you would need

All that you would need me to be,

I should have fled your need,

Too great a need to do all at once

All that had to be done. I had to learn then

Not to do it all at once, only day by day.
The world taught me and you taught me.
I had to learn to be with you,

No matter how you changed.

 

Looking back, I look at it backwards. The YOU

You were emerges from the chrysalis of who

You became. The memory runs backwards, coiling

Itself back up into the moment when
 I should have done something, I should have

Saved you, I should have prevented all this.

You’d shrug your shoulders at that. Nothing

I could have done, unrepentant narcissist son

Of the humble, philosophical father.

Looking back, you were always that man. You did not become

Something. You were revealed. I took you in

The more you changed. I learned then

To look with open eyes,

To see the hard bright truth you polished free

Of all pretence in those swollen hands.

No matter how you changed, you changed

From the man I loved

Into the man I adored.