Don’t Forget

Today’s prompt was to begin with the phrase “Don’t Forget…” and go from there. I remember so many who’ve gone on, this seemed a good way to memorialize them.

Betty and Patricia

***

Don’t Forget

Those ones you treasured
while they were here,
the ones that passed before;
their memories hold
and keep them near,
for they won’t pass here more.

The things they taught you,
both good and ill,
can guide you in your life.
Remember well
each pain, each thrill,
their lifelong joys and strife.

If you keep them close
and in your heart,
they’re never far away.
Their lessons shared,
their life, their art,
will bless you every day.

***

***

***The picture is of my great-grandmother and her daughter, my grandmother. They have both passed on and both have taught me so many lessons I’ll never forget, both for good and ill. Part of knowing what to do is knowing what not to do, and much as I love them, there is always that. As much as I can, I carry them with me every day.

Glosa — November PaD, day 18

Golly, this was a strenuous prompt: to write a “Glosa.” I have taken the description directly from the prompt:  ”This involves an epigram of 4 consecutive lines from a favorite poet that the challenge participant believes they can write successfully to. Then, write a poem consisting of four 10-line stanzas where the final line of each stanza is a line from the epigram, in order. Within each stanza, lines 6, 9 and 10 must rhyme.”

Complex, yes?

And I was traveling all day, to visit my son at Ft. Huachuca, so I did not get to this until late.

I took the last four lines of a poem by Maya Anjelou, Women Work.

***

From Woman Work
by Maya Angelou

Sun, rain, curving sky
Mountain, oceans, leaf and stone
Star shine, moon glow
You’re all that I can call my own.

—

I want to run and just pretend
that I have suddenly become a child
again. I want to carelessly leave my
belongings scattered, and never turn off
a light. I want to stay out playing ‘til
dark, and pretend I cannot hear you cry
my name into the dew speckled darkness,
until I am too tired to play tag,
and, guilty, finally, tell my friends goodbye.
My day complete with sun, rain, curving sky.

I want to live that carefree life once more
To have my mother or father tuck me
safely into bed, checking carefully
for monsters underneath the springs or in
the closet, tinkling the hangars with
their frightful claws or teeth of sharpened bone.
I want the whole scenario, complete
with bedtime story and glass of water
and on to dreams of Neverland and mer-
maids, lost boys, mountain, oceans, leaf and stone

And then I want to waken when I want
with no alarms or overly-cheerful
morning show on the local radio
station. I want to wake when I am no
longer sleepy, to stretch, luxuriate.
To hop up out of bed as spry as though
I really were a child again, no aches
or stiffness. And to breakfast where I eat
a meal like a Norman Rockwell tableau,
and our faces beam like star shine, moon glow

I want to be that child again, if just
to more completely recall how it was,
to see my folks as their younger, joyful
selves, before the pain and anger and loss,
before the agony of the divorce,
before the love that we had known was flown.
Regret and loss aren’t all I have left,
You, memories, I have a few of you.
You, lost memories are what I bemoan
Yet you’re all that I can call my own.

 

How To ________, November PaD, day 17

The prompt today was to write a how-to poem, that the title should start “How to:” and to carry on from there. My offering is below.

How to Survive a Broken Heart

At first you are sure that no one, no one
could possibly understand the depth of
your pain. And they really can’t, because they
are not you. Part of your mind says “This is
not happening,” but it is, and real
-ity feels intrusive and alien.

“Who are these people, and why do they keep
calling me mommy?” Even the kids seem
strange, like they should be changed too, somehow, or
they should stop needing everything they need.

Part of you decides the best thing to do
is to pretend everything is fine just
fine and carry on as if it is still
all fine just fine and meanwhile, inter
-minably, your heart is screaming so hard.

And there is a mental shift, and you start
to become furious, livid, that he/she
did this to you, made you become this in
(-sane)
–dividual whose life seems to be
falling apart, whose reality has crashed.

And in the process of gathering your
-self together there is an internal
monologue that is saying crazy stuff
like, “If I was better, if I was good,
if I were only who I should have been, then…”
and you know this is crazy, but at the
same time it seems to make a kind of sense
somehow, that this is your fault and if on
-ly you had changed, it would all be okay.

But it’s not. And as the reality of
your new life begins to set in, without
the person who left (you all alone, a
-lone) it is difficult to eat, sleep, breathe
even, or simply carry on. “Why try?”
Your heart tries its best to just give up, to
tell itself to stop beating, to let the
grief win. And you wonder how to survive
this broken heart. How? You simply must. And
so you do.

Camp Meeting

Another try at yesterday’s prompt – “Camping.”

Camp Meeting

The summer I was twelve
I stayed with my father’s mother,
whose husband had recently
passed.

“Tent Cabin” (Which is wholly different than a cabin tent.)

She needed the company
and someone to take care of
and I needed to learn
compassion.

She was a lovely, dear woman,
Grandma Hart,
and she was a vegetarian,
so I became one, too,
all summer.

She would go to her church
revival “Camp Meetings”
every summer,
so this summer
I went too.

She rented a tent cabin,
which was a wooden frame
with a canvas roof.

Wow! I wonder if this is really what went on!

It was mostly fun,
but I discovered that
although I liked vegetables,
I loathed vegetarian food.

At camp meeting we sang songs
for hours it seemed,
and us youngsters
got to do craft after craft
while the adults prayed
and worshiped
in the revival tents.

And by the end of the summer,
she petitioned my mother
to let me stay full time
which was slightly
gratifying,
but also slightly
horrifying
because that meant I would
never get to have
a hamburger
or chicken
or corned beef and cabbage
or bacon
ever again.

My mother said “no.”
I talked grandma into getting
a dog
instead.

 

***

As an addendum, a question: Just what is the deal with fake meat that vegetarians are always eating. If they don’t want to eat meat, they why eat fake meat? This is something I have never figured out.

Broken

Today’s prompt is “broken.” Just that, a word that has so many implications, at least to me. And this is a bit on the dark side for an optimist like me, but this is where my muse led me today.

 

Broken

 

As a child,

the world we’re born into

is whole.

 

There are generally parents

grandparents

aunts and uncles

siblings and cousins.

 

This is our life

this is all we know.

 

And eventually,

sometimes sooner

sometimes later,

someone dies

and leaves our

little

world

a little less whole.

 

And we grow and

learn and

people come into

our lives.

 

Friends

teachers

babysitters

later, bosses

and coworkers

and eventually

(hopefully)

love comes along.

 

And our world gets bigger

with each addition

but also

a little smaller

with each loss.

 

And we discover

that everyone,

everyone

is from a world

that was once whole

and with each loss

becomes more

broken.

 

And in fact,

the people that raised us,

they were broken

for as long as we’ve

known them.

 

And as life goes on

and the older each of us gets

the more broken

our world is,

the more people

we are missing.

And somehow, even making

more additions

does not take away

the weight

of the loss.

Eulogy for a Princess

I just came from the service of my friend, Dorinda Conlon.  I arrived just in time to sit down and sing a hymn and to hear Dorinda’s mom tell about her life. There was so much I already knew, but it was wonderful to hear her talk about her daughter. Dorinda was the oldest child, like I am, one of the things we had in common. She had one younger brother and three younger sisters and I have two younger brothers and two younger sisters. She had four sons, I had three. She was three years younger than me.

All of the details just confirmed to me that we had much in common and that was one reason we were friends. Another reason was that I frankly loved her, as I found many people did. It was just one of those things, I think she was someone people just couldn’t help liking. And I tried not to like her when I first met her–she was so beautiful and so perfect-seeming and such a good seamstress and so many things about her seemed impossibly wonderful. But there was no resisting her. She was a funny, beautiful, friendly woman, I too, couldn’t resist her charm and her easygoing nature, her kind spirit and her twisted sense of humor.  Yes, she had a warped sense of what was funny, and I loved that about her too. Sometimes she would say the most outrageous things, just to see who would notice. For instance, on her facebook page where it asks for school, it says she studied at Mount Olympus. ^_^

Her wrath, however, was to be feared. If someone hurt her family or her loved friends, she was ready for vengeance. The wicked humor would cut in such a subtle way, the ‘victim’ wouldn’t even know they were wounded until she’d gone. She was always there with a ready defense for her sisters or her sons or anyone who crossed them.

She was a wonderful friend to those who needed her, she excelled at being needed. She could lift the darkest mood and bring a smile to the saddest face with a humorous aside or quip. She shared her talent freely, helping and teaching others to be just as awesome as she was.

I will always miss her, and regret we didn’t have more time.  I kind of know she’s okay, but this is more selfish; I want her back, to talk to, laugh with, and just to have in my life again, but that isn’t going to happen. We will have to learn to live without her, but if we live life in a way that we can almost hear her musical laugh, that will just have to do.