Flashback Friday: Last Birthday

I wrote this poem on my dad’s birthday, four years after we’d celebrated his last. We spent that day together in the hospice, where he would die just eight days later. I was thirty-two then, and not yet ready to accept that everything was about to change.

Now I’m sixty-four. Double the age I was that day. And I’m about the age he was when he first got sick.

Over the years, I’ve heard the same thing again and again—sometimes casually, sometimes with striking clarity: “You’re your father’s son.”

And I am. I move through life the way he did. He was my role model for what a man should be—warm, kind, thoughtful, generous with what he had, especially when someone else had less. He showed love by doing, by giving, by showing up.

I’m so grateful for that. For him.

This is the poem I wrote to remember that day—and everything it still means.

Last Birthday

It was four years ago today that we celebrated your last birthday together.
You were sixty-eight and dying a slow and dignified death of cancer.
I was thirty-two and reluctantly accepting that there would be no miracle.

I sat on the edge of your bed in the hospice, a chair being too distant.
I held your hand and we shared the silence together,
The sound of Hannah opening and reading your cards the only punctuation.

I noticed things so clearly that day — colours, fragrances, sounds.
It was as if I was seeing, smelling, and hearing for two —
That I was all too aware that your senses were departing you.

As I walked across the car park, I tried to absorb everything around me.
I felt like a bird, gathering food for its young.
I wanted to feed you all the beauty that was in the world.
I wanted to make you strong again.

It was a glorious late summer day, much as it is today.
I remember thinking that winter would soon be coming.
I started to worry, about you falling or slipping.

I thought of how cold you’d been the previous winter,
How no amount of heat had been able to warm you.
Then I heard my own voice inside my head,
Telling me that you wouldn’t have to endure that again.

Roz had asked if she should bring the camera that morning.
I’d said no, that I wanted to be able to remember you as you’d lived —
Full of smiles, full of love, full of life —
Not as you were dying, so tired and weary.

I regretted that decision the moment I saw you.
I wanted to capture every second you had left.
Every moment we had left to share together.

I started to tell you how beautiful it was outside.
I so desperately wanted you to see it, to feel it.
I asked if you would like to go out in the gardens —
That I could push you in a wheelchair.

I was worried that you might say no.
But you said that you would like that.

I asked Roz and Hannah if they wanted to come with us,
But they knew and I knew that this time was for you and me alone.

As I helped you into the wheelchair, covering your legs with a warm blanket,
I thought again how things go around in circles —
How your cancer had slowly returned you to being the helpless infant,
As it had turned me into the nurturing parent.

Just at that moment, I wished so desperately
That our roles could be reversed again.

The hospice gardens were at their peak.
As we followed the little paths between the rose bushes,
I kept stopping to point out the perfect blooms.
And you told me that you could smell their scent.

I asked you how you felt.
You said the sun felt good on your skin.
I said that we’d have to do this again.
But we both knew that we wouldn’t.

We got to the centre of the rose garden — a circular opening,
Filled with hardwood benches and surrounded by rose-covered arches.
I parked your wheelchair alongside a bench and I sat down beside you.

I took your hand in mine and we gripped each other so tightly.
I started to cry, softly at first — then it became uncontrollable.
Tears flooded down my cheeks and onto my chest and lap.
Pain-filled sobs escaped from my lips.

You gripped me tightly and said,
“I know lad, I know.”

We sat there for the longest time, together in our silence.

Then a nurse who was wheeling another patient around came over.
She’d been watching us together and asked if we minded her taking our picture.
She said she could just see so much love between us.

I put my arm around you and hugged you tight.
I poured all my love for you into that picture.
I wanted the whole world to know how much I loved you.
I wanted them to know what a wonderful person you were.

We didn’t stay out there much longer.
We’d said what we needed to say, in actions if not in words.
I knew things would be different after that day — and they were.

Your body grew weaker, but it wasn’t just that.
You were so very tired and weary.
I think you had accepted your fate —
Just as I had finally accepted that there are some things love cannot overcome.

It was four years ago today that we celebrated your last birthday together.
Today I celebrate it on my own.

The feeling of loss doesn’t seem to get any easier.
I’ve just got more used to living with it.

What has remained easy is the way you make me smile.
So many times, I’ll stop in my tracks as I remember something funny —
And I’ll pause and say,
“I love you, Dad.”