GRIEF Poem: and he’ll die again., by Victoria Armet

I don’t know how to behave at a funeral.

Dad cuddled, played, joked, laughed,
loved us with a ferocity I thought was forever.
And then he packed a bag full of camo and
guns and we waited with baited breath
for him to come back

for him to come back
angry and bitter

with us, the world, organized religion,
with how normal society didn’t allow him to
carry a gun at all times for “protection” as
he taught middle schoolers instead of
commanded troops with no free will.

(Though he yelled in his sleep over and over
until mom laughed it off enough to respond.)

No, he would never keep ammunition in the
house, our house, our Home, he told mom
over and over until she believed him despite
what her heart had to say and how we
all knew better because we
knew him.

National Geographic printed an article about
Emotional Abuse
when I was eleven and I loved the shit out of that magazine,
yet I handed over this one copy to my mom
because that was him and she
dismissed

Me in the cold, phone in hand with no one else
Home but him and I as he lay unmoving yet aware,
painfully aware as we both were,
until the ambulance arrived and they asked
me about medications I didn’t know and
stole my mitten and
he disappeared
but left the mounds of snow to be taken care of.

In our dreams, he walks and it was all a
ploy to get more help, more kindness, more
from us all until we collapse from exhaustion;
our bodies too worn out from the fighting
and the caretaking to remember how to
breathe and want.

Watch a movie with me, he repeats each night
though he knows it’s nearly midnight and I want/
need
time to myself without debating my
nonexistent future or if mom hates him but
I sit in the chair and watch the beginning of something
we’ll never finish.

Lies pile high like the medical supplies in the mail
until he slips, slides, nose dives, and truth
rears its ugly head and the nurse hands me tissues in her office
while he plans his escape and lies and
lies
like he did at the bottom of the driveway and I still don’t know
the medications to help.

The aid got a ramp put on her house a year before we knew.
He wants to know why I don’t answer his calls.
“What’s Tori’s problem with me” replaced mom’s hatred/
future plans/money/movies/care/compassion/
fatherliness.
Because we only matter to each other when under the same roof.

I don’t know how to behave at a funeral,
yet I attended a new one every time he opened his mouth.