To Revisit It, For A Sister’s Sake

You say it carefully the last day
of your visit, do not say more, just,
"Dad loved you. He was proud of you–
your going to college, then to Africa.
Know what I’m saying? I was so jealous."
This just after my telling you,
your constant apologies feel aggressive.
So I say, "You have to let go of it, Pat.
I asked Mom why she let you bully me.
She said, you were shy, needed confidence.
I saw the fairness of it at once. You’re stuck
somewhere that keeps us children.
We’re adults. Friends." Then you say,
"Sometimes I feel, you love that Italian
girl more than me," alluding to my friend
of fifty years. Confounded, I say,
"She does not make me feel defensive."
That evening as I listen to your stories,
Pat, my words return as partial epiphany:
your Alzheimer’s sticks you in the hurtful places,
and you labor to make yourself known.
The saying of it, a struggle, like deciphering function–
or junk–in ladders of shared DNA.
The first day of your visit soon echoes,
an exploding expletive:
You ask, "Do you remember
our last conversation with Dad?"
Oddly, I am thinking of that visit,
a cool summer night in 1977, I in from out-of-town,
you down from the flat above,
We siblings drinking wine on dad’s porch,
telling our stories,
and dad leaves his oxygen apparatus to join us.
We poke around that conversation,
how dad, apparently apologizing,
worries that taking you as an infant into bed
"to warm my bones," he says,
may be viewed as perverse–and how, though puzzled,
we dismiss it. Now you remark,
"Aunt Ellen claims, mom saved me."

We move on to stories of dad’s prodigious,
sometimes cruel teasing. The evening ends
with your apology for beating up on me
linked to his loving me more. At last I begin to hear it whole.
From dying’s depths, he knows his arbitrary parenting
has hurt you. You probe deep, too, but need me
to acknowledge, I was preferred
and that has made a difference in our stories.
How sorry I am now. I apologize to you both.

Mary Terchek

http://bathroompoet.net