Regressions

Do you remember that old man with cloudy eyes? That old man that stuttered every time he called you. That great man whose wrinkled skin showed you, centimeter by centimeter, a story filled with struggles, happiness, frustrations, loves, forests, seas, and fruits. That old man who was young sometime before and whose hand you held as support not to fall. That man who you considered your hero at least once. The one you didn't see during the day sometimes, and you simply resigned to dream of during the night.

That kind and tender person which you ignored for the most part of your life. The one you denied. Do you remember in secondary school or high school? Remember how you blushed with shame... SHAME...because your friends might see you on that great man's side? Now you only have the memory, and you cry, and you talk about him, and you want to take his hand and make sure everyone sees you by his side.

But those gems are perishable. The things that matter, the things we care about and we stick to the most are destined to stop existing physically. And your are a perfect example of this eternal irony. The human as an eternal adolescent, who doesn't know what he/she wants, and never learns to value anything. What a sad story the one of the father that's always there for his kids, even when those kids don't want to know anything about their father. It's the “natural” road, unfair and hard. Because they are the ones that are only left with their white hair, their wrinkles, and their labyrinth of random and fantastic memories; the ones that stay alone at the end.

I see old people. Those men whose eyes hide piercing screams that cry for company... for the no-annulment. I don't even want to imagine the memories, regrets, laments, and cries that are trapped in their deathbed, when they're surrounded by faces and silhouettes that are now hard to decipher. They must cry in silence. Cry behind a peaceful face.

And you, as part of those undecipherable and unrecognizable faces, just observe with incredulity how something that seemed eternal extinguishes slowly, at the rhythm of the erratic shaking of his hands. And is in that final irony when, if you pay attention, you could hear a spectral whisper, filled with calm, that says: “you've had me for years... don't torture yourself... take my hand and we'll be in peace.”

_______________________________________

To my father,

Leonard Cohen said

“Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.”

I've never denied you, I've never been ashamed by you, I've always admired you.
But I cannot stop feeling that I owe you so much.
I hope there are no final moments filled with guilt or regrets.

I love you, I respect you, and thank you for everything you have sacrificed for your kids,
the ashes of your life, the poems of an idealist and a dreamer.