(I wrote this poem before my daughters were born, which explains their absence.)

“At the Resurrection with My Father”

I will look for you.
I will look for you at the resurrection
When we will awake with incorruptible bodies.
Your heart, right and healed.

Will we recognize each other quickly?
Will you have your mustache and I my beard?
Augustine says we’ll be about thirty years old,
But you and I never knew each other at that age.
I was born when you were thirty-six
And you died when I was twenty-eight.
(Only twenty-eight years together. How horribly brief.)

I will introduce you to your grandson.
He’s a redhead.
We followed your lead and adopted him.
I wish he could know you now,
That he could sit in your lap, feel your long arms.

I will look for you at the resurrection.
Together we will sing
Jesus songs in Jesus’s presence.
The bent world made straight.
You, your grandson, and I praising together.
Glory!

“Karamazov!” cried Kolya, “can it really be true as religion says, that we will arise from the dead, and come to life, and see one another again, and everyone, and Ilyushecka?”

“Certainly we shall rise, certainly we shall see and gladly, joyfully, tell one another all that has been,” Alyosha replied, half laughing, half in ecstasy. — Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov