The Man Underground

I miss him like a tree misses its roots when they are severed

When we die, do we look up through tree roots to see the sky?

My father died forty-five years ago today. I was just a teenager, unfinished, all nerve endings and Southern defiance. I wore low-riding blue jeans with big flared legs and believed I knew everything. He died in Grace Hospital on a humid spring morning, the air thick with lilacs and unsaid thi…