In commemoration of Father's Day 2013, I would like to recount something very personal.

Shortly before my father died more than four years ago, he contemplatively said in private, "Someday . . . you are going to miss me after I am dead." I awkwardly replied, "What should I do when I miss you?" He softly but firmly replied, "Know that I always loved you." And then we hugged for a long time.

My father died on a early Monday morning, a few days before the first-year anniversary of his wife's and my mother's death. They were married for sixty-six years and I was their child for fifty-five of those years. His endearing reassurance especially remains with me today because it was the last time my father told me that he loved me. He injected his serendipitous tender words into my heart on a Friday afternoon that was to be three days before his death and the last time I embraced and felt his warm presence.

My father was right; I do dearly miss him, and not only on Father's Day.

I had the distinct privilege to preside over his gravesite committal service on December 19th, 2008. Although not a poet, the time between his death and his funeral, I wrote the following words and read an edited version at the gravesite in the presence of my three siblings and most of their grown children, and my father's closest attending friends. For what it is worth, I believe that the motivation to write the words sprung from my father's final reaffirming and affectionate words to me.

The poem's stanzas are fashion in an intentional chiastic literary manner, being set forth in six concentric stanzas (A, B, C, C', B', A'), all of which encompasses the central theme in X. The poem is entitled, Not By Choice, But Because Of Death.