Last words, immortal words, words that never go away...
Steve posted a question about such things, but has since removed it. I did not answer then, but have spent time mulling them over, so though his words proved fleeting, I'll make my digital answer last.
Caveat: Be careful what you set in stone, the words may outlast their relevance.
In a drawer at home I keep a tape my father made for me in the months before his death. I rarely listen to it. I never listen to it unless I am alone and want to cry. Twenty-four years later and I still cry hearing his scratchy voice coming from the speakers; a voice that I've lacked for most of my life. In his dying days his mind turned to his religion, and he wanted me to have these thoughts.
The two sides were recorded separately. Both are father's blessings, bestowed by a father to his children. One was done before cancer had weakened him completely. The other is a hurried whisper hissing off the tape. I remember that day vividly. Gray clouds, wet soggy ground; at school, I was called to the Principal's Office by intercom. I was told to hurry home and I did, running long parts of the way. The Cartwright's blue pickup truck was backed up to our front doors. A shell covered the truck bed, where they'd put a mattress to ease my father's trip to LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City, some thirty miles away. I knelt by my father's bedside, he placed his hands on my head, and gave me a blessing that he thought might be the last. He didn't die then, but those words are all that remain.
One reason I listen to the tape so seldom is their content. They are filled with Mormon doctrine, his hopes that I would grow into a good Mormon and share his belief in the Gospel. But it didn't happen that way. In no small part, my prolonged struggles with my Mormon upbringing resulted from these blessings. It's harder to betray the dead than the living. Our relationship, his conception of me, was cut off and will never grow. His words remind me of that, remind me that I have failed to fulfill his expectations. (My mother has drawn up a new expectations, which in time I will probably fail to meet as well, but that is another story.)
Now instead of receiving my father's words with happy agreement, I must extrapolate their meaning and look behind them at the loving parent, dying before his children are grown, wanting to give me something precious. He did. I treasure the tape as my most valuable possession. I live in fear that it will someday vanish and leave me completely without a piece of him. But I wish I could hear it without feeling guilty or wayward.
It's not that I think I am wrong. I like my life, I'm happy with my choices. I just don't like betraying my father's hope. We can't live for the dead, but it doesn't make the struggle any easier.
So I would be very careful on the specifics of my final message. All my poems are an attempt to create that final perfect message. Joy in the beauty of nature, the comforts of friendship, courage in the face of strife. There are so may things to say that might always be true, I want to say those things. I want them to speak hope, love.
