The Man with the Lopsided Grin

It’s not that he hated the Grateful Dead.

It’s nothing like that.

He just never heard of them.

So when he was laid out for viewing

wearing a hand-painted,

psychedelic Jerry Garcia tie

it just didn’t seem right,

that’s all. Nothing did.

Not the cream-colored stiff neck shirt,

nor my brother’s old shiny wedding suit,

which fit three sizes too big for him,

even when safety pinned to tighten

it on his emaciated frame.

Nothing seemed right.

Certainly not his smile.

Definitely not that!

My dad’s smile was never forced.

He never smiled much, but it was

never forced when he did.

Not like that.

My brother said it took a lot of muscle

to even force a smile. His jaw was too stiff,

too hard, too stubborn even in death.

My brother was right.

When everybody was oohing and awing over

my cousin Paula’s new baby, I tried to adjust him —

make him more like himself.

Instead, I made the left side frown.

Nobody noticed.

I don’t think anyone really

looks in the coffin anyway.

They just pretend to.

My Aunt Gina even said,

He’s the best he ever looked in years.

I knew better.

I knew that the shriveled old man

with the colorful fishes swimming off

his tie was not my dad.

So standing next to him hearing

the sobs of my cousins Lucia and Dominick

wasn’t so bad.

Nor was carrying the coffin into the hearse

and sitting next to it for the fifteen miles

it took to get to St. Clement’s Cemetery.

Nor was lowering it into the graveyard

and shoveling the first mound

of dirt onto him.

’Cause the man with the lopsided grin

in the shiny seersucker suit and Grateful Dead

tie was not my Dad.

My dad died long ago.