Death Shatters Lives Poem by Gert Strydom

Death shatters lives, breaks relationships
and yet from being small
in the background
my father still lingers

with his arms stretched out
as if protecting,
reasoning with my better self
to retain integrity, to remain
the man of which
he set the example

and in my keenness to write,
my thoughts of God,
even my tastes in food
is somewhat determined
by the man that he was

but in his absence I have developed
a thing to cling,
to each and everything
that has meaning for me,
with the fear of lost
of family, animals and friends.