It's been almost a year

That's three-hundred-sixty-five days

since the last time I saw you

Since the last time you had life inside you.

I remember the wires, the hoses, the machines

The quiet beeping everytime the machine would breath.

The machine breathed for you.

I remember the smell of hand sanitizer

and medicine, and bleach, and rubbing alcohol.

 

I promise, that isn't how I remember you.

Not there, in that bed, your eyes closed.

You know, they brushed your hair?

Because mom kept talking about how

you would hate to see your hair like that.

 

But no, I remember you in your back yard

Watching the neighbors house because

"this is the third party they've had this week."

Fixing the swing set that all of us grandkids

were too big to play on now. Building it

for those "partying" neighbors of yours.

 

I remember you in the garage in the middle of the night

fixing The Dome that you bought from the

Perkins Observatory when I was twelve.

You made me love the stars, do you know that?

I look up in the sky and I think of you.

I know you've probably spent your last year 

visiting every strange world you can.

I've spent my last year trying to figure out

which one of those stars is you. I think I know.

 

Back in the back yard, just me and you

loading your Magnum to show me how to shoot

And I shot that pop can right off of the tree house.

You taught me how the aim high and low.

I even shot through the same spot on the can twice!

 

At the fairgrounds and in the farmer's bare corn fields.

Swinging your metal detector around

looking for buried treasure and history.

That is how I remember you.

Do you know you made me love history?

That's why I'm here, in this dorm room

Geez, you should see this place,

You'd love it, you really would.

I'm getting ready to do something great

I wish you could be here to see it

To see the person that you shaped.

 

It's been almost a year now, do you know that?

And being a year without you

all three-hundred-sixty-five-days without you

I try my best to remember you every day.

Mom misses you, Dad misses you,

My sister misses you, My brother misses you too.

Your wife misses you, but I miss you the most.