Saturday, May 14, 2011

Goodbye

[image from google]

The dogwood
are blooming
in this month
that you died,
as are
the flowering plum
and the rhodos
your wife
planted
with such care
in her happy middle years,
before Alzheimers,
before cancer.
You told me
that then
you did it all,
looked after her
and the house.

You tended her
as tenderly
as those blooms
for twenty years,
until she died
and you stayed on,
alone.

As you weakened,
I came
to tend you,
the evidence of
your fineness
everywhere,
most especially
in your son.

You were
living your life,
then you
were gone;
Presence,
a slow weakening,
and then Absence.

And now
the house
is bare,
stripped of
everything
you gathered
in your decades
of honorable,
simple
decent
living:
all your treasures,
the family photos
chronicling
life lived,
your favourite chair,
all gone.

I clean
the empty house.
Turn the lock.
Shut the door.

Goodbye.

11 comments:

  1. Beautiful and touching. Memories everywhere.

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  2. Sherry, a poignant poem. I am speechless.

    Pamela

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  3. A fine, old-school gentleman, who began failing in the months I provided home support, but who fortunately did not suffer long, dying much as he lived, peacefully without lingering or pain. His son told me today, "You couldnt ask for a better Dad." These were my thoughts as I cleaned one last time.

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  4. Sherry, this poem makes me sad. I am glad you were there for this gentleman and his son! God bless you.

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  5. This is an amazing poem of life and the ebbing of it. I sit in honor of this life lost. This is such a universal poem but not so for the love and care the writer gave at the end.

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  6. I also agree with Judy Roney. There is something universal, ringed with truth and humanity that sets this poem apart. It speaks to all of us, of our kindness, of our mortality, of the small little things we do with compassion. This poem brings it out so well.

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  7. so sad, haunting and vivid of one's life tending souls. How they bloom or don't, how we all can make a difference~ @>---

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  8. Poignant and beautiful and written with such compassion - bless you Sherry. x

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  9. What a beautiful memory of an obviously lovely man, Sherry.:-)

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  10. Like the cherry blossom tree, rich and full one moment, and then, suddenly bereft of all grandeur, straggly branches, bare, empty.

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