Father

Father
Today you would be ninety-seven
if you had lived, and we would all be
miserable, you and your children,
driving from clinic to clinic,
an ancient fearful hypochondriac
and his fretful son and daughter,
asking directions, trying to read 
the complicated, fading map of cures.
But with your dignity intact
you have been gone for twenty years,
and I am glad for all of us, although
I miss you every day—the heartbeat
under your necktie, the hand cupped
on the back of my neck, Old Spice
in the air, your voice delighted with stories.
On this day each year you loved to relate
that the moment of your birth
your mother glanced out the window
and saw lilacs in bloom. Well, today
lilacs are blooming in side yards 
all over Iowa, still welcoming you. 

Whether or not this poem refers to Kooser’s own father I do not know. However, it is clear that the speaker’s father has been deceased for “twenty years.” Yet like At the Cancer Clinic, the tone of the poem is not dreary or somber. In fact it is somewhat hopeful and accepting. Kooser uses detail to highlight the extent of the son’s remembrance of his father. He addresses his father and says he remembers the “heartbeat under your necktie, the hand cupped on the back of my neck, Old Spice in the air…” This is a fond recollection, not a sad or upset reminiscence. In fact, the speaker expresses gratefulness for the death of his father, for his father was suffering toward the end of his life. There is a mention of a hypochondriac, which describes a person who overanalyzes one’s “symptoms” and thinks he or she has some kind of debilitating disease or disorder. It is sort of similar to paranoia, in that there is an incessant fear that one possesses a multitude of diseases. And so the speaker’s father would have obviously suffered a great deal, always trying to seek treatment for something he didn’t actually have. Kooser’s attention to detail also highlights the relationship between the speaker and his father. The fact that the speaker remembers so much about the story of the “lilacs in boom” demonstrates a very tightly knit father-son relationship. In doing this, Kooser shows that sometimes in death there is happiness.