Ed asked. We were speaking of the death of fathers,
the week after his dad’s funeral. I recalled
my father asleep in the chair, how his voice rasped
to welcome my bits of news, spooning a bite of ice cream,
adjusting his body around the pain once more.
Ed’s was a lake-dad with boats and fishing poles and lures.
Hunting, too, and probably Little League,
although Ed was not the star athlete in the family.
My dad worked at our grocery store. He couldn’t
come to the park Saturdays, watch me stumble in right field.
I did not have the back-yard-catch dad,
or the scout-leader dad or the camping-dad.
Ed’s dad shepherded their big family;
Ed once told how in family room he marked their mischief:
“If your mother could see this she’d just die.
                                                                                Rita, come in here!”
I had the behind-the-grocery-counter dad asking,
“Got enough bread and milk?” and how
he taught me to count their change backward:
“Thirty-five, forty, fifty, a dollar. Thank you.”
Ed’s dad died of cancer. So did mine. And we got busy
with colonoscopies and PSA tests to stave off
what killed them.     
                                “I still miss him,” I said.
And we remembered more—
for me, questions not answered and his handshake
when I got up to go. It was how he said thanks
though I was in the greater debt.