Lester, December 1, 1978

He had been up on his walker

just the week before,

Thanksgiving,

shuffling through the dining

room, jones-ing for his TUMS

antacid fix instead of turkey.

There was snowfall that weekend.

He stared outside, toward

Chippewa Lake,

eyes fixed,

as the black flickering shadow

of the red cardinal danced

on the white snow

under the maple he planted

when he built this house.

As the days followed, the walker

retired to the side of the bed,

Dad, resigned to slower breaths, slept.

As a boy I often begged him to make

a muscle, so I could caress

the hardball of his bicep.

Once, but only once,

he playfully chased me

across the side yard in Lodi,

I was startled by his speed.

He was his mother’s son 53 years.

That morning, early, she called

our cousin on the Greenbrier,

she knew...she professed over the phone,

“something will happen today that will break my heart.”

I got the call at my job, “coma...

come now.”

Mom waited for the priest who never arrived.

The ambulance came for duty and left before me.

He was gone.

“No parent should ever outlive

her children,” Grandma wailed.

She passed on before the need

to bury any others.

Parker’s Funeral Home.

An uncle gripped me in a hug.

He started to cry, but soundlessly.

I felt his fear,

like the fabric of his dark suit jacket.

We put the rest of his TUMS

in his coffin.

excerpted from

NOVEMBER: A Poem in 30 Days

in memory of the last month of life of Lester C Coe (1925-Dec. 1, 1978)