After

Audrey Shafer

˗ homage to Ada Limón’s Before

Long legged and fifteen, I sit before

my mother, a silhouette in white winter light

before she says I have something to tell you

about your father

before she says he died

before she fell silent

and I, the quiet one, finally said

he killed himself, didn’t he

before guilt digs its crab claws 

before the fatherless graduations

before hiking the long road to reach his age

before a cardboard box in my attic

houses all his chicken scratch writing

before I have an attic

before unmet grandchildren

and great grandchildren

if suicide were only final

and not re-lived, reminders ever blooming

as grey clouds swallow

the innocent before.

About the Author

Audrey Shafer, MD is Professor Emeritum of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine / Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System; founder, Stanford Medicine & the Muse Program, Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics; founder, Biomedical Ethics and Medical Humanities Scholarly Concentration; co-founder of Pegasus Physician Writers, and co-founder of the new Stanford undergraduate minor in Medical Humanities. She is the author of The Mailbox, a children’s novel on posttraumatic stress disorder in veterans.