아빠 안녕
자꾸 무너져 내리는 눈꺼풀.
뭔가 말하고 싶어 하지만, 입술 근육이 힘을 잃고 있어
이제는 알아들을 수 있는 말을 하기도 어려운 상태.
품에 안으면… 한 30~40킬로그램쯤 될까.
‘앙상하다’는 말로는 도저히 담을 수 없는 고통의 흔적이 느껴진다.
수전증으로 덜덜 떨리는 손을 꼬옥 부여잡고
나는 늘 그렇듯, 밝고 힘차게 말했다.
“내 사랑 받어.”
그러자 자동반사처럼 아빠 입에서 흘러나온 한마디.
“나도 사랑해.”
지금 내가 무슨 말을 들은거지? 약 0.02초 의아했던 나 자신
쉰두 해를 살아오며
아빠에게 처음 듣는 사랑한다는 말이었다.
그리고 그 말은 어눌했지만 가슴속에
놀랍도록 선명하게 박혔다.
이 선물,
내 가슴속에 꼭 간직하고
아빠를 잘 보내드려야겠다.
Goodbye, Daddy
His eyelids kept falling, heavy, collapsing in on themselves.
He wanted to speak, but his lips had lost their strength.
Now, even forming words I could understand was nearly impossible.
When I held him, his body must have weighed only thirty, maybe forty kilograms.
But no word like “frail” could capture the pain that lingered in those bones.
I clasped his trembling, Parkinson-stricken hands tightly,
and as always, I spoke to him with brightness, with strength:
“Receive my love.”
And then, almost as if by reflex, the words slipped from his lips:
“I love you, too.”
For a fraction of a second—0.02 seconds, maybe—I was startled.
Had I really heard it?
In all my fifty-two years,
it was the first time I had ever heard my father say he loved me.
The words were slurred, unsteady—
and yet they struck me with astonishing clarity,
lodging deep inside my heart.
This gift,
I will hold it close.
And with it,
I will find the strength to let him go well.