To my son

 without a second of hesitation

You offered to pick me up, after already having spent

Many hours of driving, 

already, that day, 

You offered to drive another three hours for me to 

Spend a bit of time with my brother

Who was laying in a sterile hospital bed in an

Anonymous suburb far away.

We drove in the dark, through the congestion of rush hour

Until we reached that small sterile room where my dear brother,

Looking so old, so frail, so vulnerable, 

And you were with me, my son, the one I brought into this world,

And feel too often that I don't see enough, that you have launched

So far away, but here we are, together, in this moment, in this so 

Terribly vulnerable moment.

And I watched you be so amazingly you, pulling the stroke

Chart off the wall, finding a permanent marker and a post-it pad,

And I knew there was no one else that I wanted to be with me

In that moment but my son.

And when my brother looked at us with his sad quizzical eyes and 

Said What the Fuck between streams of unintelligibility

- we could only laugh, and harder yet when

He could not read back the same words.

But with sadness, too.

The drive back was shorter, lighter, WTF 

Let's see what tomorrow brings.