Elegy For My Father, Who Is Not Dead

"I can't 
just say good-bye as cheerfully 
as if he were embarking on a trip 
to make my later trip go well." - Andrew Hudgins

This poem is an example of an elegy for the speaker's father.  The ironic thing, though, it that the  speaker's father is not dead yet.  The poem is a poem of mourning for when the father does die.  This elegy helps to show the speaker's feelings towards death.  Although his father is ready for death, and maybe even wants to go, the speaker cannot find himself feeling cheerful for the coming of death, both for his father's and his own.  The speaker feels sad when thinking that his father will die soon.  He is not ready to say good-bye.  Although the father believes they will meet again in the after-life, the speaker does not feel the same way.  Again, the speaker says that his father is "ready," but he is not.