Transmogrified from handsome, fit, and trim, to lesser forms of all these traits and worse, I see an inescapable reverse of progress, unremitting fall of him
who raised me, once robust and hale of limb. Two hundred photos track decline as hearse awaits — a slideshow tribute; folks disperse; we family watch the coffin sink, then dim.
Not every portrait’s flattering to see. I ponder on the inner man, as well, as some of his decisions bore disdain.
Yet broken or intact: this, too, was he. It takes a gallery, in full, to tell the tale where love remains to wrestle pain.
