Post No. 049: For My Family, Part 7 — My Father's Passing Away

(Image from Cannon Mortuary)

A Day Which Will Live In Infamy
(Or, "My Father's Passing Away")

I cannot find the words
to express how I feel about
your passing away, Father,
except to say that,
for me, it was "A Moment
Which Will Live In Infamy."

I cannot comprehend the thoughts
to express the way that I feel
about your passing away, Pa,
except to think that,
for me, it was "An Hour
Which Will Live In Infamy."

I cannot shed enough of my tears
to express my feelings about
your passing away, Dad,
except to well up with how,
for me, it was "A Time
Which Will Live In Infamy."

I cannot hear enough of my crying
to express these feelings about
your passing away, Papa,
except to weep for the way that,
for me, it was "A Day
Which Will Live In Infamy."

-Paul Whiting
(a.k.a., A Creative Writer)
"I maybe say too much about how life really is!"

My Writing Notes:

The reason that I wrote this poem can be summed up with the following statement: My father passed away on February 18th, 2018 and his funeral was held at Cannon Mortuary in Salt Lake City, Utah (the image of which is illustrating this poem). I did not attend his funeral (unlike the funeral for my mother, which was held at the same mortuary), because I was in Portland, Oregon and I was not able to travel. (The reader should know that I am HIV-positive with full-blown AIDS.) And I realized that I had not written a poem for my father's passing, as I had done for my mother's passing; so when I republished the poems that I wrote for my family on this blog, from my "Small All White in the Forest" blog, I decided to write a poem in order to honor my father's passing away.

This poem was written from December 17th, 2021 to December 18th, 2021, which is three years and three hundred and three days since my father's passing away, which I have not really grieved until now.

And this poem was only published on my "Paul Whiting — A Creative Writer" blog.

This poem was written in Portland, Oregon.

However, even though this poem was not written in Salt Lake City, I still have this poem labeled under "My Utah Writing," since the topic of this poem is based upon my family, who live predominantly in Utah.

-Paulee

This "Paul Whiting — A Creative Writer" Post No. 049 was edited on September 17th, 2023.

"Poetry is using the fewest words possible in order to describe all that is possible to describe." –Paul Whiting [June 1st, 2022]