before he was fifty-six

Norm, some brilliant turns of phrase here lift this to something quite special.  Lines like "framed himself in my memory" and "long enough to never forget me" are nicely skewed from what we'd expect to read, and the imagery in the third stanza is sparsely elegant. 

This was genuinely a pleasure to read.

I love the way the line breaks do so much work to shift the meanings and reading of this. Really nicely done.