J.C. FREDLUND's ARTISTRY

My emotions around losing my father to the disease of addiction when I was eight years old.   He died injecting Sterno into his veins.

A candle that flickered

then nearly dimmed

I’ve carried through the years

my heart, within.

In sorrow I stood

at my own heart’s door

watching you leave

cut to the core.

I’ve anguished long hours

into the night

struggling to recall

your face in my sight.

Oh, daddy of daddys,

where did you go?

How I’ve longed for your touch

I still love you so.

It never mattered

what you did to me

I’d have died for you daddy

couldn’t you see?

Without you my life

ceased to be

For you were the very

life force in me.

Some say it’s night terrors

I still struggle through . . .

in my dimly lit bed

I’m afraid of you.

It makes no sense

for you’re no longer here

Yet I’d give my right arm

to have you near.

You don’t understand

. . . . . . and neither do I

how I’d cry and cry.

I have few memories

to connect to the pain

But, sometimes mid nightmares

I cry again.

The agony of losing you

was worse you see

than anything you ever

did to me.

They say you were mean

beyond belief

you cut-out my heart

Oh, beloved thief.

I know so well

that when you attacked

it wasn’t YOU daddy

but that monkey on your back.

That monkey who stole

you away from me

so that the rest of my life

without you, I’d be.

After all these years daddy,

my aching for you goes on

for it still breaks my heart

that the monkey won.

I’d have slain the monkey for you

but you couldn’t see

when Patty was one

and I was just three.

There was no dark monster

I wouldn’t have fought

if back into your arms

we could’ve been brought.

But the dragons I know

you tried to slay

eventually won

and then took you away.

You’d entered a no man’s land

your drug induced hell

it stole the life from you

with it’s wicked spell.

You were not to be ours . . .

anymore . . .

To this little girl’s heart

I closed the door.

No more did I dare to love

for love equaled pain

I couldn’t let that ever

happen again.

In dreams of you daddy

I still call out your name

I still waken to find

a world of fatherless pain.