Heartbreak

Fiorella found this remembrance among her notes:

I phone my father in his retirement home
Every week at seven o'clock, long distance,
And every time, I ask him how he is
And he asks me how I am

I lie, of course, and say that all is well,
That I'm just fine, that all the kids are too
Glossing over the cancer scare, the finances,
The job uncertainty

Dad's eighty-seven now, and as he admits,
His brain is not as as sharp as once it was
The macular degeneration, the deafness, the years,
Have taken their toll.

I will not add more