LIFE

The 3 of us stood in the room,
And considered,
While our dad took his last few breaths.
There was so much to take in,
A life spent loving books,
A respect for history,
An openness to the future,
And the possibility inherent in all things.
You have hope,
You do your best,
But most importantly you cherish,
All the moments you get to be together.
I can’t say I knew him.
Even now, glimpses of him,
In memory or photos,
Leave me with questions.
But I felt his presence in all things around us growing up.
He knew service and gratitude,
Were good places for his ambition.
He embraced difficulty and discomfort as necessary attributes of a good life.
He was not all the things he might have wanted to be,
But he was working on it.
Every day.
“The world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best.”
– Viktor Frankl