the signs were made that morning
in a motel room on Cape Cod
carefully lettered
with bold black electrical tape
on slabs of posterboard.
that room seemed the right place to be
when we felt bad
that Tim would miss the wedding
for a bone marrow transplant.
it felt right the same as when
you get up at night with a baby
and know there's no other place
you're meant to be right then.
it hung in his hospital room that photo:
twenty-three friends from the neighborhood,
familiar faces afloat in summer pastels
with the penguin punctuation of ushers
on the sunny terrace
of the Ocean Edge Golf Club.
some held letters
that spelled out
"H I T I M W E M I S S Y O U
holding them upside down
and sideways
with everyone laughing and waving
so Tim would know
how temporary and comical was his absence.
a year later
Tim's mother put the picture
in his casket
and said he loved it
though his sister said
when she gave it to him
was the only time he cried.
my youngest son John
took Tim to chemo
and they hung out together
as they had since childhood but more.
John rented a beeper so he would know
when Tim was dying.
On the seventeenth of May
he rushed out of work
into a massive traffic jam
on the Southeast Expressway.
the kind of jam where anyone
who can cut in front of you does
and you think about leaving your car
right there and running all the way
to the subway and then you see an opening
in another lane and start to gun it
but you don't because an accident
would take time and you belong
at a hospital bed in the Quincy living room
of your best friend.
for the last fifteen minutes
of the drive
there was no point in rushing
but John didn't know.
when I asked what it was like
in that traffic jam
he just shook his head.
Then he said,
"I was pounding the roof of the car."
what the world really needs--don't you think?--
is a beeper system that works
one that gets us the message on time,
"I'm starting to die now. Please come."
I've never met anyone
who wouldn't want to be there.
if they knew.
