What if they forget me,
not just my face or tone of voice,
but how I stood through every storm
and never felt I had a choice.
What if they forget the weight
I carried in the late-night hours,
how I braced for loss each time we hoped
for one more chance at blooming flowers.
I watched them being born. I didn’t cry.
My eyes were fixed on her instead.
I feared the silence, feared the still,
feared seeing pale across that bed.
Anneke, with trembling breath,
brought life through ache and constant dread.
Each pregnancy was a haunted place
where joy and fear in shadows bled.
We’d lost two children. Grief ran deep.
Their names were never spoken loud.
But every kick beneath her ribs
was stitched with memory like a shroud.
Then Jack arrived, our morning sun,
his cry a sound I feared I’d miss.
He carried weight of those unseen,
yet still I held him close as this.
Then Hank, who holds the world in eyes
too wide to fit inside his years.
He watches me. I see it clear.
He learns from both my love and fears.
Then Rosie came like whispered wind,
a mercy we had dared not claim.
She knows no grief, no weight, no loss,
just steady arms that call her name.
But I am tired. I break too fast.
My patience wears and pulls apart.
And though I try with all I am,
I sometimes fail with all my heart.
I raise my voice. I get things wrong.
I bear a shame I cannot shake.
And still they trust me, call me Dad,
and look beyond the faults I make.
What if they lose the nights I stayed
to kiss their foreheads as they slept?
What if they lose the warmth I gave
and hold the harsher words I kept?
I want them to remember me
not perfect, never polished clean,
but present in the tangle of it,
still showing up in every scene.
Let them remember I was proud
of who they were and how they grew.
That every laugh and every tear
was something sacred, something true.
Let them remember I was near
beside their mom through pain and prayer,
through hospital and trembling vows
to always love and always care.
Let them remember I was flame,
not always soft, not always kind,
but burning bright to guard their way
and leave a warmer course behind.
And if they lose the sound of me,
the timbre time will wear away,
I hope they feel the love I gave
still rising with the break of day.