A poem.

This is the second memorial I've written in just a few months. My other grandma -- mom's mom -- passed away early Sunday morning, following years of declining health and a lengthy stay in hospice. She was comfortable at the end, which is all any of us could ask for. Grandpa is still around, and the two saw their 60th anniversary together the previous Thursday.

Grandma, above everything else, fancied herself a comedian, in the "asking any cop, security guard or otherwise uniformed law enforcement officer she encountered to frisk her" kind of vein. She also kept a joke file that became a sort of holy grail in the way she prohibited the grandkids from looking at it. Finally getting access around age 16 made for probably the greatest anti-climax of my youth. I think she'd appreciate this little poem I wrote several years back, inspired by a joke she once told me.


Marmalade

Buttonhole gapes through seams
Sprouting a tousled tail
Like a wispy chest hair.

Mom says if I pluck it,
Two will grow in its place,
Which is why grandma has a moustache.

Grandma doesn’t have buttonholes;
She wears sweaters
And is in love with the bogey man.

He peers through the portholes
On his tip-toes
When grandma plays the piano:

“Marmalade and papa played—”
tink tink
“—and that’s why I’m here.”


I'll close with some Little Brother Montgomery, because if grandma ever could play the piano, it would certainly be boogie-woogie. Embedding is disabled, so you'll have to follow the link.