Father, I Will Love You (Forever)
The earth I sink my hands into is cold, holding a secret by the telltale temperatures of its loamy embrace. This coldness soothes my burning soul. The deeper I claw my way down into it, the closer I am to the dust of your bones and thereby, the essence of your eternalness. Or so I hope.
My love for you forms to a solid block of ice and one tear falls, shattering the form and turning my love to shards. I love you in every tiny piece. I have accepted long ago that I don't care what the state of your physical form is. If the worms ate your flesh and then expelled that flesh through means of digestion, then I love whatever remains and whatever those remains feed, over the span of time. A blade of grass, a leaf on a tree, a pine needle. I love you there. Whatever form your physical body takes, even now, that is how I love you.
The shame of your death, personal to the core, forms the weight that I carry. A sort of innocence, I carry with me. You could not have known my love for you would exist in parsed fragments, how your death would weigh upon the family like a blood-soaked blanket, never moving too far to the left, or the right. Stagnant and cumbersome. Reeking of decay.
How could you know I would claw my way through these emotions, these fears, and the earth–with my raw bare hands, my dirty fingernails and the smell of the soil bringing comfort to my mind, all the while? How could you know this would happen to you, to me, to us?
My love for you is like sand inside my heart. It is dry and heavy.
My love for you is like mud. It is viscous and stubborn.
My love for you pours down my cheeks in salty tears which fall like rain for they have no place to go but down. Whatever parts of this earth effected by the dew of my tears, this is where I love you. I love you there.
Even if I die of desiccation and dry up like an ivy climbing the side of an old barn from an abandoned garden, I will love you in these fragments of time, where life ebbs and flows and I sit here dealing with the bitterness of sorrow, which punctuates my day to day life.
I look out across a vast sea of emptiness. Me and the surface of the sea and me and the waves. I see no end in sight and no promise that we will be reunited again when this life is through with me. All I can do is let this grief wash over me again and again and again and again until it is no longer suffocating me. And even if it does suffocate me someday, I'll take my last laboured breaths and love you in each exhale.
I love the dust that comprises your physical form now. There is nothing you can do to stop me. I love the hope I have in death, to see you again.
In life, I spend my time seeking ways to justify the desire to be free of this binding to the physicality of my flesh juxtaposed against the depth of your grave. But I am no quitter, so do not worry.
Even if I crave a release, I rest in the hope to believe I have your love, in return for the priceless currency of mine for you. I know I am loved. I know you must love me too, even in death, for all of this to be so alive in me. I can feel you in my heart and see you in my mind's eye. You assure me that I am safe to love you back, forever, because I promise you, I will. I will.
Father? I will love you. Forever. I promise.
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