Father's Day, Still

It's been nearly five years now since my father left this earth. As with other close family members who have moved on to the next life, I have an unshakeable sense that he has left this place, but he has not and cannot leave me. There is something vast about the loss of a father, especially if  you have had the fortune to be close to yours, and if he has been a Good man.  The price one pays for this, though, is summed up well in the words of a friend of mine whose father died a few months ago:  "My world will never be the same." I knew better than to try to comfort her with words that weren't and couldn't be true, so I replied: "Yes, that's true. Your world will never be the same." 

And yet we know, we are still and will ever be our father's daughters. Nothing changes this. It is a fact, an eternal one, that even death is powerless to change. 

The poem below is one I wrote for my father and was able to give to him, while he was still here with us, after a family trip we had made to an island in North Carolina, with a lighthouse.  I post it with profound gratitude for the blessing that he was and is, in my life and in the lives of many others.

_____________________________________________________________________

Ysabel de la Rosa

 Ode to a Lighthouse

for my father

Thou art

light-in-darkness

shelter-from-storm

sign-of-safety

the place-of-high-seeing

that grants

the wide, the deep, the far

perspective.

Wind does not bend you

nor wave break you.

I will look for thee

through all voyaging,

look to thee on all

homeward journeying,

knowing I cannot fail to

find thee, for time and

traveling have taught me:

should the light go out

in untoward circumstance,

thou wilt not, cannot cease

to shine.

Photo by Theasis of iStock Photo