How Suicide Takes Your Father

How many times did you say goodbye,
when we were in the kitchen and I saw that look in your eye.  
But I didn’t listen, I was just a kid. 
It didn’t matter what I did.
You’ll always be with me until I’m old;
you can’t be moved, that’s what I was told.

You told me you were going that night beside my bed.
Your bags were all packed in the compartments inside your head.
You put them on a plane to a place no one could find,
You told me, this time, you’d leave your pain behind.

I tried to make you stay, to show you how it used to be.
I found an old picture of us, back in ’93,
But all you could see were dead memories. 

You hugged me, and I felt you break open, 
into all of the moments.
The ones that you needed, 
but I couldn’t hold them. 

So when that long black car 
took me to where you are
I knew this was where you were going when you said goodbye.
Back when I didn’t listen; 
there in the kitchen.

You’ll always be with me until I’m old;
you can’t be moved, that’s what I was told.
Just like the black marble stone with the day you were born,
and the dash for the ones that I mourn. 
Like the lilies that grow beside it there,
that come back in the spring air.