Elegy Through Our Son

The news came softly through the dark,

in someone else’s care -

your Agnes typing gently words

to say you’re no longer there.

And all I thought of first was him,

our son who knew your name -

not through your presence in his life,

but glimpses just the same.

I met you when the world was wide,

in the university’s open air -

I was just seventeen and new,

and you were already there.

You filled the space with strength and ease,

eyes lit up with play -

a rugby player, loud with life,

I gave my heart that day.

But loss began before this news,

it started long ago -

when you returned back home to Fiji,

and left me here with Woe.

That I would raise our son alone,

with only parts of you -

a name, a laugh I’d try recall,

a story half but true.

He came into this world of ours,

before he knew your face -

I held him close and spoke of you

to fill that empty space.

I wondered what he’d take from you,

what of you might carry through -

your strength, your smile, your quiet ways,

the things I barely knew.

And then one day, you found us both,

through years that stretched between -

not fully back, but just enough

to touch what might have been.

You wrote to him, he wrote to you,

in careful, hopeful lines -

a father held in paper words,

across divided time.

But something kept you both apart,

no meeting ever came -

no voice to voice, no hand in hand,

no memory for him to name.

I do not know what shaped that space,

or why it stayed so wide -

why love was kept in written form,

and never did reside.

Still, you were there in smaller ways,

in birthdays, passing through -

a quiet thread that said to him:

your father thinks of you.

And now you’re gone beyond return,

no more words and likes to send -

no chance to be the man he meets,

no time to try again.

He is a father now himself,

your grandson in his arms -

a baby learning how to live

with echoes of your form.

Another child will soon arrive,

a daughter yet to see -

forward, your story living still,

through him, through them, through we.

And this is where you live the most,

not in what we once knew -

but in the man our son became,

in what he carries through.

I see in him the space he holds,

the father never near -

the questions that may never fade,

now you have disappeared.

And yet, in him, you have not gone,

you’ve just changed in a quiet way -

from distant man to a father shaped -

within life he builds each day.

And what I saw in you, so loud with life -

I see again in Ben -

and just as when I first held him,

I gave my heart once then.

And in his life, both strong and kind,

in all he’s chosen to do -

there is a quiet, living proof

of what remains of you.

Goodbye, Pat -

your story does not end.