Why doesnt everyone think of this? His daughter
is a minister herself, perhaps that gives her license;
perhaps its the art he loved, or just the indelible
imprint of a person on the people who love him.
Perhaps its love. At first, we are taken aback,
seeing what shes laid out not a body, out here in the park,
and not the standard photographs or video montage,
but his actual clothes the giant jacket hung
from a branch on a tree, and on the ground
his shoes, huge now without the tall man to stand
in them. Ellie stands on the grassy rise, and instead of
talking about him, remembering this and that,
she gives us Dans arms, hands splayed out
in his wide gesture of amazement, voice lifting
from a charged hush to an onrush of words
for the latest earth-shaking idea, invention his, yours,
some genius across the world. Isnt there a rule
that says you dont mimic the dead? Dont bring
a dead mans shoes to his funeral? But a daughter
can make her own rules. Ellie is all he used to
bend our ear about, and this is the best
funeral ever. We dont learn anything, we just see
what we didnt even know wed noticed.
For an hour, we grow big, amazed; like Dan.