Elegy for My Father, Who is Not Dead

I was a little confused by this poem. I thought to myself, what is the point? The speaker is telling of how his father wants a new journey. He wants to move on to bigger and better things so to speak. His father is not yet dead, but one day he will get the call telling him his father is dead. It seems to me that the speaker is not ready for his dad to die; however, his father is ready. This is true in our lives today. No one wants their family members to die, yet when the person is ready to go, it is up to the family to be positive and let them go. I found a comparison between the poem Crossing the Bar and this one. The phrase "embarking on a ship" is mentioned in both. Also, both poems deal with death. The comparison is how view of death is like embarking on a ship. IN the Crossing of the Bar, the person was ready to embark. However, in this one, the son is not ready to "say good-bye cheerfully as if he were embarkingon a ship."