IN LOVING MEMORY,
EDGAR G. SMITH
You were the only person who knew how to push all my buttons. You knew how to cheer me up when I was about to cry and how to make me hopping mad—literally.
You weren’t the type of
person to talk about yourself or your feelings. Me either. I guess that’s
why I think we understood each other pretty well.
Who’s going to get mad at me
when I read the comics out loud?
Who’s going to make me do
the puzzles in the newspaper?
Who’s going to jokingly tell
me to get out of the bathroom or tell me to go to bed in that fake gruff voice?
We never talked about the
serious things, but we didn’t need to.
We both knew what we felt. I
love you. That’s something we hardly
ever said, but we showed it every day—even when we argued.
I’m going to miss you. It’s too quiet at night without you watching
TV and your oxygen machine humming.
It’s almost like you’re just away for a few days at the hospital and you’ll
be home soon. I wish that were
true. I wish I could talk to you about
articles in your Popular Science magazine or watch westerns with you—even argue
with you about something stupid. But
you suffered so much and complained so little.
You deserved a break.
You showed me how to be
strong without saying a word. You’re
one of the bravest people I’ve ever met.
Don’t forget me up there, because I certainly won’t forget you.
When I was a little kid
going to bed at night, we used to have a complex ritual where I would tell you
goodnight and goodbye about fifteen different ways before letting you turn out
the light and go out for coffee. I kept
adding more ways to say it so you would stay longer. But we always seemed to end on the same one:
“See ya’ later, Alligator!”
And I hope somewhere up
there you just said, “After while, Crocodile!”
Your Loving Daughter,
Donna Smith