Lost Parent

I heard another brother speaking on the radio today.

You, kid, are my brother. Your beautiful mother, lost to her spell and lost to you for 6 months, until she gets back on her feet.

And you, Superman, without a mother. Almost a year now. And your stoney silence. I'm certain we have lost each other as well.

The man on the radio has an article in this week's New Yorker about his lost father.

His father recited poetry. He fought against the regime in Libya. Where Greek drama was played out. Was taken as a prisoner, and even when he had no material goods, he always had a poem in his chest.

His father had written a last letter, musing if his son had stayed loyal to his first 2 loves, poetry and music. And he has.

Even if he hadn't been short listed for the Booker prize, he sounds happily haunted by this Ghost.

A man who was disappeared. The last trace of him was in a photo found with a prisoner from the same town; a man who had lost his memory and didn't even know why he had this photo. Of the only man he had seen for over a decade.

I know what it is to lose a parent.

And last night, I had a dream about being in my Mother's house. I wanted to use the car, but was afraid to wake her. Or my father, who was also sleeping in the house.

He died when I was 11. I never borrowed the car from him.