Tell Me About Your Life, Dad

At sixty-seven, I still feel like a little boy when I think about my dad who died when I was seventeen.

How could I feel any differently?  My life with dad never went past that.

I’m living time standing still and then in reverse.  I’m getting older and he’s getting younger and younger and

I’m tracing him through photos back in time to when he was a little, blond-haired, round-faced boy in scratchy, woolen

knickers standing next to his father, my grandfather,

an incredibly handsome dark-haired, dark-eyed man with a long slim face, my dad’s little hand on my grandfather’s forearm.

Tell me about your life, Dad, my little boy. Tell me, my poor boy, how sad it was to lose your full-bodied, big bosomed, round-faced,

beautiful, blonde mother and then that tall, dark handsome man within a few short years of each other while you were just a little boy and left all alone.

Tell me about it, Dad, and maybe, just maybe, I can help save you the terror and help you cope, cope, cope so that you wouldn’t leave me alone and fatherless at seventeen.