My Great Aunt Norma passed away on Saturday afternoon.
I would spend some time writing here.. probably without much direction..
But instead I’ll post a poem that my brother Joel wrote(with his wife, Kate helping with the final touches!).
Its so lovely..
have a read:
Having seen enough of long suffering to last you a lifetime,
you, my great aunt Norma,
slip down in sight of a single moon,
with barely enough time for two mass emails
to take flight like wild geese
over the fields of our scattered family.
It was yesterday
at some-time-o’clock
that you settled down into your own breath
and became younger
and younger,
the lines on your face
the first to go.
You who lived so long
hardly hiding wide eyed wonder
behind glasses
shaped like individual moons
until yesterday at dawn
when the news came
of no more fuel for your body
or of a diversion of nutrients
to another source,
one far from
cracked heels on old shoes
or left-hand turn signals burning out.
I think you would appreciate
the way that I step like a cat
under the tree of your life,
and lie awake under its white bare branches.
Leaves of my memories of you
fall all around me
in circles of descending light,
burying me in your memory
even as you are buried in mine.
I remember today
the curiosity that always surged forth
so quietly from your eyes,
like a hush between violin strokes,
reaching out into the world,
a world we shared
from time to time.
We are walking around today,
all of us,
with the quiver of your voice
in our heads.
We listen and we hear
as you say our names,
one by one,
like birds singing in turn on a windy wire
or cups of flour counted out into a bowl.
Each of our names waver on your lips.
And you are gripping our hands
as though you were blind,
asking us questions
that you know the answers to,
smiling and linking your arm with ours
as the wind blows off the great lake.
We do not know just how we came to love you,
whether it was at some thanksgiving
or christmas,
much less do we know
how it was that you came to love us,
whether it was at our births
or birthdays
more likely it was at the lonely prayer vat
where you mixed our names
with the names of God
like an apothecary.
But we hardly question these things now.
We learned long ago
what a strange love it is
that family makes,
how it holds the head
that weeps
and surrounds the body
that aches.
Today we stand under your tree
and marvel at all the seasons
erupting at once, like a choir.
Thanks Joel.
I am not defined by what I am not. 