Tag Archives: loss of a loved one

Remembering Grandma at Christmas

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Remembering Grandma at Christmas

The years have chosen to abrade
the paper angel Grandma made
that year when Christmas cheer was thin,
because for weeks we were snowed in.
Even Santa ceased his action
for his reindeer had no traction.

Weeks of snow and sleet and fog
even kept the catalogue
from providing a Christmas doll
when Santa couldn’t come at all.
And so the holidays that year
did not reflect our usual cheer.

No tree, no lights, no heavenly choir,
our only heat a roaring fire.
We kids complained to Mom and Dad
and by Christmas Eve, they’d had
as much of kids as they could stand
and that’s when Grandma took a hand.

Her silver scissors nipped and flew
creating something that was new—
a Christmas angel feathery light
that floated that December night
above our heads in fire glow,
hung by a string, rotating slow

around the room with wafting wings
descending from above on strings.
And from the dark a heavenly song
prompted us to sing along.
My Grandma led, with timorous voice
that song that always was her choice:

“Silent night, holy night!
All is calm, and all is bright.
Round yon Virgin, Mother and Child.
Holy infant so tender and mild.
Sleep in heavenly peace.
Sleep in heavenly peace.”

One by one, we entered in,
our voices first halting and thin,
but when my Grandma chimed a bell,
our family choir began to swell
up to the ceiling, throughout the room,
dispelling darkness, cold and gloom.

Mom made cocoa on the coals
while Dad made popcorn, filling bowls
we strung on thread to deck our halls
from curtain rods to lamps to walls,
along with paper snowflakes that
twirled on their strings to tease the cat.

In the firelight’s magic glow,
they made things magical and so
every normal Christmas since,
we love our turkey and pies of mince,
Christmas presents to poke and squeeze,
bubble lights and towering trees,

but what’s most special is when Pop
puts Grandma’s angel on the top
of the tree covered in flakes
and popcorn strings the family makes.
And when we sing her special song,
if angels sing, she’ll sing along.

Prompt words today are angel, lover, abrade, traction.

Felling the Tree

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Felling the Tree

Today my eyes teared over
as they bulldozed the tree
in the undeveloped lot next door.

It had to be cut.
A house was being built there and
aside from the trash it dropped,
It blocked the view.

Always the one to get his point across,
“I’ll tell you what,”
the contractor said,
“I’ll dig it up and plant it in your yard.”

But I didn’t want the mess of it, either.
I wanted the tree next door
where I could see it
without  dealing
with the fluff in my pool,
the pods falling off.

That tree was a resting place for  birds
which I said good by to
along with the tree.
Then, while I was at it,
I said good by to my cat
who had drowned in the pool
a week before.

Good by to my husband
who had hoped to see that tree
and the view around it
every day for the rest of his life.

Good by to my mother,
who passed onto me
her love of trees.

Good by
to all loved creatures
recently gone.

The tree was gone in a minute,
along with dry bushes, weeds.
The back hoe scraped the soil over
Coke cans, water bottles,
plastic flowerpots and chips wrappers—
the detritus from houses on each side,
as well as evidence of years of workers
who sat in the shade of the lot for lunch.

For a year or two
of privacy lost, calm shattered,
peace surrendered,
I would get new neighbors,
perhaps a friend.

Clouds of dust billowed
over my newly painted wall.
They’d repaint the wall
and plant new trees,
the builder promised,
as they bulldozed all.

 

For Stream of Conscousness Dec. 11: Tree

The Rising: dVerse Poets Open link, Dec 11, 2021

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The Rising

The clouds flow up the hills like the mist of falls
rising back up to the level they fell from.
I’m making my way down to the hammock in the gazebo.
It’s night, and I toe my way through the grass barefoot,
hoping for no surprises.

Far below, some hombre on a microphone pontificates lakeside.
He could be a circus barker or a kitchen pot salesman
speaking from a booth at a fiesta a mile below.
He seems to be selling something,
but perhaps instead extols the virtues of a bride and groom
or a fifteen-year-old butterfly
emerging from the cocoon of her quiencieñera.

I am deep in the groin of Mexico, swinging under the stars.
Up the hill in my house, the phone chrrrrs insistently
as I retreat from all public noises above and below.
My opening heart  floats  up as I sink deeper under blankets
to watch the clouds rise through moonlight.

I imagine my mother, my husband,
my father, my sister, my friend
and other loves both long and recently departed,
floating in mist above the busy world,
distracted, cushioned by their amazement
at finally rising above voices, gunshots, hospital beds,
screeching brakes, trees, mountains, universes, and their own shells.

How long are they aware of us, the hoi poloi below?
How soon fixed fully on their own rising?

 

For dVerse Poets Open Link

Glimpses

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Glimpses

At times you were the problem and at other times the buttress.
At times my lost direction and at other times my compass.
You were my kindred spirit, my teacher and my lover,
and when you went away, I felt that I could not recover.

I saw your face in everything—in rivers and in clouds.
A dozen times, your profile. Your retreating back in crowds.
Love dies but does not vanish. It has a thousand faces
seen at the least likely times in unexpected places.

Facts we can’t face up to in our mutual lives
swarm around in memory in buzzing swarming hives.
Facts as sweet as honey. Facts that sting like bees.
Niggling facts that seize the mind to torture or to tease.

It is a constant truth with love that one will first depart—
an act that seems so far away when love is at its start.
But the truth is always looming. Death will end what we’ve begun.
That inevitable setting of the brightest glowing sun.

Prompts today are things with faces, buttress, kindred or recover.

Upon Losing a Friend or Lover

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Click on any photo to enlarge all.

Secret

Upon Losing a Friend or Lover

It does no good to have remorse for partners you are missing.
Better that you concentrate on ones you could be kissing.
Be not forlorn. Frustration is something you can fix.
Just engage with life again and get back in the mix.
Life was meant to be lived out, no matter what the cost,
though it might take many friends to replace one you’ve lost.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/10/rdp-thursday-partner/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/10/fowc-with-fandango-remorse/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/10/your-daily-word-prompt-frustration-january-10-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/10/forlorn/

Relieved

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Relieved

All of us will be bereaved
unless we are first to be sheaved
by that great harvester of all
who severs life, bringing our fall.
Life was not meant to grieve away.
One’s own life is too much to pay
in mourning one who’s gone before.
Life should be lived with one great roar,
not whimpering for what’s been taken.
Life is our one chance to awaken.
Each day gives us new reason for
choosing to walk out our front door.
Though we may feel what’s past is best,
why not experience the rest?

 

 

The prompt today was relieved.

September is the Cruelest Month–NaPoWriMo 2016, Day 4

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IMG_0006 - Version 4

Riding in luxury on a sofa in the back of Denis’s pickup, seeing the beautiful Klamath country in style. We were driven directly under a rainbow that day, so it was on either side of us as we passed!      photo by Georgia Moriarty

September is the Cruelest Month

One cruel month is January, murdering December––
failed resolutions of last year we’re now forced to remember.

February rivals it for those with lovers missing––
conjuring up memories of  valentines and kissing.

March may come in cruelly–a lion or a ram,
but it is not the cruelest month. It goes out like a lamb.

April is the the month of rain and flowering and rhyme.
It cannot be the cruelest month. It is the most sublime.

May is not a cruel month, nor June, most surely not.
July and August are most kind––luxurious and hot.

September is the month for me that is the cruelest.
September is the month where I received my biggest test

in learning how to live alone after so many years,
conquering the loss of you. Battling my fears.

September was the month you left because you had to go––
away from planned adventures down a road you didn’t know.

Setting off alone–something you rarely did in life,
where you preferred to travel with a lover or a wife.

October found me no man’s wife, November found me gone
to take the road that we had planned. I would not be death’s pawn.

Then that December–– crueler than any month I’ll own.
That was the month I had the time to finally feel alone.

 

The prompt today was to write about “The cruelest month.”
http://www.napowrimo.net/day-four-4/