You hear the term “death rattle”

and you don’t know what to expect

until your dad’s chest provides the acoustics.

Happy New Year’s Eve, Pops.

It certainly sounds like

you are going out with a bang.

Six months ago, chemotherapy sounded like

the worst thing you’d have to go through

but hey, at least it’d give you a fighting chance.

Now, through gasps for air I can’t unhear,

there’s no denying that the lymphoma

was stronger than I always knew you were.

I take turns with Mom and the other women

who’ve always been there

to sit on the bed next to your frail, bony frame.

(You were always so solidly built.)

I pour words into the parts of you

that I’d like to think are still in there somewhere.

Tell you I’m proud of you.

Tell you we’ll be okay without you,

that you don’t have to hold on just for us.

What a holiday juxtaposition:

there are people out there getting wild,

but the only blacking out happening here

are your half-opened eyes

darkening with deoxygenated blood.

None of us had ever seen or heard

of anything like it before.

(I wish I couldn’t still see it.)

When the ball drops in New York,

we think maybe you were waiting for it,

so we count down in the doorway for you.

“It’s 2024, Jeff! You made it through the whole year.

You can go now, if you want.”

Clearly, you still knew better

because your stubborn, 

Central-Standard-Time ass didn’t go yet.

By the time our midnight comes,

your breath barely perceptible,

chest rising slowly and at intervals 

that make us check if this is it

each and every time,

I finally suggest to Mom what I thought

must be missing the whole time:

“Oh shit, do you think he wants to go out

to some rock music?”

When the first song came on—

I close my eyes and I drift away…—

Mom and I looked at each other in expectation

and reveled in the dark humor.

You’d be so disappointed to have missed the

opportunity for the joke.

You didn’t go out to Boston.

(I’ll never hear that song the same way again.)

You made sure you lasted all through 2023, damnit,

leaving us peacefully at 12:32, we think.

We think because

there were no big fireworks, no

mirrorball’s descent, no champagne toasts.

Just my mom with her hand and head on your chest,

a bewildered look to me, and an unsure declaration:

“I think he’s gone.”

Ringing in the new year by 

ringing up the coroner,

we’re staying up extra late tonight

to watch you, covered compassionately

in a quilt like your grandma’s,

leave out the door for the last time.

When you were seventeen,

you’d come out in the morning before school

to find a full bowl of oatmeal in your dad’s spot

and your newly widowed mom crying in her own.

You didn’t know how else to help other than eating it—

just a senior year of silence and sobs

and months of morning oatmeal.

I’ve played the roles of comic relief

and responsible daughter.

Made sure Mom laughed, even though

she’s watching the man she’s loved since 15,

the one who still seemed to recognize her

24 hours ago,

die in a hospital bed in the room

she’ll sleep in alone tomorrow night.

I’m a lot like you: I cope by doing

what needs to be done.

But I don’t know how you did it at seventeen

because it’s hard as fuck even in my thirties.

January 1st will never be the same.

Just a new year, still no you.