Poppa
December 14, 2017It has been two years today since my Poppa passed away from cancer, and I wrote this poem in his memory the month after he died. It's very personal and heartfelt but captures who my strong Poppa was during his life and in his fight with cancer.
You would call every holiday
and birthday
and talk for what we thought was
too long.
I remember the way your voice wavered
when I finished playing my music
as you said that I sounded beautiful.
Seatbelts were your demise
and oreos were your
taste of heaven.
I never thought that a disease
would be
your downfall.
Strong-willed, independent minded,
I loved your free spirit
you would talk of my
future
as a world-changer.
My world changed when i heard
they found cancer
in your spleen.
A group of cells couldn’t take
one organ, we were sure.
cancer wasn’t strong enough
to drain
the ocean out of my poppa.
But the cancer didn’t drown.
Diagnosed in september
hospitalized on life support in december.
mom told me how you
stayed positive
smiling when johnny lulled you to sleep,
maybe the cancer
would sleep, too.
We went to visit you,
not to wish good luck, but to
come and
say goodbye.
I don’t know if you heard me,
but I said
I love you.
Pain became a river as my love
poured out an ocean of tears on
your stretched skin,
your hands unable to hug me,
your smile hidden beneath
your failing cells.
The hardest day of my life came then,
knowing your cells had betrayed
knowing my wedding will be missing one guest
knowing my graduation will be
one person emptier
Cancer seeped into your body,
the rugged, worn skin,
but left a piece of you untouched.
The portion of you that never gave up,
never stopped cheering,
never stopped living.
The definition of cancer is
A disease caused by an uncontrolled
division of abnormal cells
in a part
of the body
but that’s wrong.
Your cancer couldn’t have been described
in one definition.
it was a killer, not a group
of abnormal cells.
that definition doesn’t define
the hurt we went through
when we lost you.
Cancer didn’t know
that you earned a
purple heart when you were 16
because you saved someone
from a burning car,
or that you were never seen
without a smile.
Your funeral was beautiful
and our tears were enough
to fill the ocean up
that you once were.
Our strong-ocean poppa
will never be drained.
In memory of John Wilson, a fighter.
0 [lovely words]