A Last Call and Response

Nine days ago, my dad…Nine days ago, my dad stopped creating on this plane.

This is my greatest grief, right now.

There is sooooo much that I could say. So many things I want to say. So many things I want to rip out of my chest and throw them onto the counter, bleeding and ugly and saturated with….muchness. But I don’t think that is for this moment (don’t worry, I am sure you will likely get a good bit of that).

No, instead, I think this moment is to honor. Honor the impetus to write, to create. To do it in memory of him. To live the life I wish he would have. Big. Without fear. Without excuse. Without apology.

Carpe Motherfucking Diem

I want to suck the marrow from the bones of life and not look back. I want to bask in the knowledge that I *AM* fearfully and wonderfully made and because of that I don’t need to cower in a corner waiting to be different before I present myself, before I give myself permission to…be.

Last year, for Father’s Day, I got my dad a book for writing poetry. Truly, this was a passion of his. And yet, he only wrote one. The first one. The prompt requested that the writer describe their face as a topologist would describe a map. This is the last poem my dad wrote, I think:

“For Ashley Erin on Father’s Day 2024”

Visage
by Matthew Greg N. Stricker

Today,
I shaved 3 days of growth
From my lips, cheeks, and chin;
An experiment failed
Much to my chagrin
Peppered and gray
With dark hair on my head
I was forced to forsake
It was not a look I could easily make
A center part does little to hide
Two creases and two furrows
Unkept brow on each side
Lidded eyes (Left one scarred),
Dark lash lines and bags
2 Dark brown pools
All barred
And lightened by spectacles silver
The bows extend over high cheek bone
(Native American, don’t you know)
The frames sit on the bridge
A bulbous beak
Worthy of characters Suess (or Warner),
But I’d rather squak
Of two birds, the eagle and the hawk
My ears are rather flat
And that’s all I will say about that
My smile droops a little to the left
Due to the teeth I am bereft
With dimples in each cheek and my chin
A rejoider to where this poem did begin

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…I have dreampt this (like in a for-real dream). Ain’t that some shit. All the pieces are here. My father’s poetry. His passing. The music. My feelings. I have felt this before. I guess I can be grateful for the rehearsal. I still don’t know that I was prepared; in fact, I know that I was not. I really just wanted to believe that he would get to “the good part”…

---

I decided I would do my own, since my face has looked markedly difference since he left this plane.

A Last Call and Response
by AE AR

The shape is all wrong,
Crumpled and melted.
How will I know how to bring it back to rights
Now that a reference is gone?
Portals closed.
The good still here
Sifted from you as you were pulled into the astral.
Thank you for your service.
The bad still here
Scored across my soul.
Someday, I will call it character.
The ugly still here,
Stains and burns spattered about.
Don’t worry, I’ll transmute it.
The malleable, cafe’ con leche of my skin
Carved deep like a sandy clay, with lines
And a dark furrow between my canted brows.
My eyes closed against the truth,
You are gone.
Their swollen sockets, adverstisments for the one-two punch
of grief.
Lips pulled tight between the parenthesis of my cheeks
Desperate pressure, hoping to cauterize a vital wound.
Hair unsmoothed, creating a hazy boundary
Between me and the world.
My dimpled chin and cheeks,
Completing the picture.
A response to the call set forth by your first steps.

I love you, Dad. Thank you for not giving up, for not letting go. I am so, so glad you get to breath easy now.
I am proud of you.

[Matthew] Greg Nichols Stricker
October 21, 1963-April 12, 2025