By Leo Milmet, with anonymous collaboration
Breakfast.
Jim and I, with our son John and daughter Lynn.
Daddy Jim started acting strange.
Then he started talking strange.
“I’m going to watch a sp-sport t-todd-ay, where they hit a b-ball in the hole.”
“Golf?”
“G-g-gah-lffff? No, Victoria, n-no, not g-goh-lf.”
John said he was having a stroke.
The paramedics came running.
Doctors at the hospital asked many questions.
“You got a wife?”
Daddy Jim gave no answer.
The doctor said, “Any children? A baby?”
Jim said, “D-doll.”
I asked Daddy Jim, “Doll? What doll? Do you have a doll?”
He answered, “Baby. Baby…Babydoll.”
So, I said, “Babydoll? Who is your baby doll?”
Jim said, “Victoria.”
Me.
Then he closed his eyes and died.
I cried.
Editor: Claire Jenkins
Leo,
Now THIS poem speaks to me.
line 3, “he started acting strange”: can you specify a sensory image?
Yes.
In real life, he got so angry at a waitress in a breakfast restaurant for not being fast enough in giving him more coffee when he drank through his fourth cup, that he got up and poured it himself. And he NEVER got angry like that about something so small.
Thanks for the feedback, Mr. Sarkis. I do understand what you mean. That was just a strange, tragicomic anecdote.
That happened the day he had the stroke.