Today I was busy taking care of laundry, taking care of dishes, and your four grandchildren however, I never forgotten that today or yesterday was your birthday. I think I might have calculated it right you would have been 96 years old this year. I still can't believe it's been seven years since you've passed. We all think about you often and wonder how you are doing. I have this poem held in an rough sage green wooden frame with plastic glass and a rose from your funeral lying on the bottom still holding together. I pass this every time I go to bed or help put the little ones to bed, the poem that your grandson wrote that my brother wrote that shall never ever be forgotten because it is fervently about you. I want to type it up in my blog to somehow remember and relieve the memory of you.
Departures
I tried to remember a time without you, when they told you'd gone. I tried, but failed, to recall memories in which you weren't waiting patiently, quietly at the other end of the phone, at the other side of town, at an unassuming place just back of center stage to appear when the time was right.
When they told you'd gone I thought of Easter egg hunts in your backyard, of Christmas mornings as you entered, bags stuffed to ripping with presents. I thought of Saturdays at the park feeding ducks, of popsicles that you could break in two, of the 4th of July at Sugarhouse Park, a young boy wrapped snug in a tattered wool blanket, fireworks flashing through the dark above us.
When they told you'd gone i wondered where to, and how long. I wondered what sights you were off seeing and imagined how you'd look when you returned, when the bus pulled up and you stepped off, slightly tanned, road-wary but smiling, eager to retrieve your luggage and take us back to your house where you would show us mementos from your journeys.
When they told me you'd gone I remembered your permanence, your consistency, your love. I remembered the five children you would spend your weekends without fail--dark-haired, dark-eyed, dark skinned. Children who knew nothing of the world you came from--of its expectations, of its pride, who knew only that you were there and in being there that you loved them, entirely, completely, without fail.
When they told me you'd gone I pictured your house, a vessel without a pilot: its warm rooms and hallways that once held our childish laughter grown quiet. The echoes of our footsteps departing with you as you stepped from one life into the other. The water stilled, the vessel moored, abandoned now, silent.
When they told me you'd gone i thought of all the things i hadn't yet told you--of the photos you hadn't yet seen. My youngest child is eight months old Grandma--and walking. You haven't yet met her--held her, and she's changed so much since the last photo we sent.
When they told me you'd gone my heart leapt, and I thought of the young woman I'd seen in a picture taken decades ago--youthful, clear-eyed, beautiful. I thought of her stepping clear of her body as one stepping from a broken down automobile, slamming the door on it finally and walking away free, the cool wind on her neck, her eyes firmly facing future.
September 2005
For Grandma Lloyd
-Erik Levy
