A Vigil

As my father moves through the gauzy epilogue of his time on this plane of existence, I think about our common nature, and the scaffolding influence of his nurture. I'm conscious of the nearly universal grasp for immortality, and how it manifests in the name my father and I share: my first and last inheritance from him, and his first and last investment in the eternal. I drive to work alongside the sunrise, singing with my latest musical obsession, and I marvel at how fully I’ve come into my life, just as his closes. Maybe, like a clone in a science fiction tale, I’m not so much myself as him continuing, as he intended when he placed his name on my birth certificate. I mourn the end of his meaningful experiences in this world, but I like the idea that in some way, I’m an extension of those experiences. Every moment we die and are reborn. The person we were, who so feared not existing, ceased to exist almost immediately, and will again, and again after that. So it is as my father drifts with the mortal tide to his dusky punctuation, and a small part of him is driving forth to another job, another song, another sunrise.