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I’m helping Dad break into his house. The doors are unlocked but he can’t use them. They could fall from their hinges and he wouldn’t step over them, wouldn’t cross the threshold, wouldn’t pass through the frame. We’re standing before one now. Don’t poet me, he says, doors are not metaphors. He’s right to discourage me; I translate everyone into bad verse, sometimes out loud. Just now I pictured Dad “tackled by memories” at every doorway because he played high school ball. Cheesy, but I use it to stiff-arm season-ending thoughts. That linebacker sprawled across the welcome mat where she collapsed coming home from their anniversary dinner? The linebacker with the boobs? That’s Mom. She won’t be getting up. Dad’s pain is real, but for me it’s a chance to sketch with the telestrator. See how the weak-side end-around avoids the dead wife. The obvious play is an out-route at the pantry, but that leads to the accessible entry he built for his grandson sidelined by an IED. There are losses in every direction, shut-down defenders at every door. His best man was clotheslined and dropped for a loss at the entrance to the garage. I risk telling him what I’m thinking, and he laughs without mirth and punches me. So we might get through this. But we never make it inside. The memory of Buster sprawled at the slider off the deck where he collapsed scratching at the glass takes Dad to a knee out of more than fatigue. He’s my wife’s Dad, actually. He hasn’t a hint of a bald spot. I touch his shoulder, speak his name, call him coach, help him up. He lets it happen, hates still living, wants to go. He’s offered us this house because he thinks we walk thoughtlessly through doors.

original story Copyright © January 10, 2007
revised story Copyright © January 20, 2026