I was in from Dubuque to stay with him. He wasn’t shuffling yet,
half-stepping his way through the last of his long, unbeautiful life,
and you had to watch helping him with what he could still manage.
Like emptying the trash and walking the tied-off, white trash bag
to where it goes on such and such a day. Yes, it’s crazy-brave
to keep bagging garbage your last day or two on the planet.
However, that’s what he did, my father. Tied off filled bags,
looping strings across unbroken fields of white in Ohio where

when we say the word white the last thing we think of is death.
My mother was buried that Easter, and by summer it was clear
he was doing what he did by blind faith and rote—cleaning house,
cooking, laundry (no ironing). Performing small acts necessitated by
just being alive in America with Stage IV lung cancer in twenty eleven.
He cinched it. Tied it off with an overly theatrical snap and open-palmed
circus-showiness. He wanted to appear strong enough that Threat of Death
couldn’t touch the smile he got after having carried that last bag to the curb.