Pain.

While my life lay ahead of me his was coming to an end. I stood by the bed and watched as he took his last few breaths.
The faces around me told me I was meant to cry which I did dutifully.

Some say he was talented , but that talent was suffocated in the times we lived, misdirected by his addiction.
Music was his life, classical Jazz his passion. I never understood how a grown man could cry as he did , tears rolling down his face while he made us all listen to what he said were the some of the greatest, over and over again.
We were three, none as musical as he was,none as appreciative as he was , still somewhere I must carry his gene.He was my father and I was the apple of his eye.

I saw then, felt much later, but understand now.
Pain that we are each born to carry never leaves you, never dies... it just re- surfaces time and time again sometimes through the eyes of relative strangers.That's probably why we warm to some and not others..... why we fail to explain why we stay when clearly we should move on.