My Grandma is Gone...

It's a haunting refrain that echoes

Over and over in my head,

Or pops up to announce itself afresh

When least expected.

After one of life's small pleasures, I think,
I should write Grandma -- she would enjoy this.
Then I remember...
My grandma is gone.

Leafing through a magazine

I spot a faded photo in a frame.
And there it is again...
My grandma is gone.

The ceramic ducks that graced her kitchen counter

since memory began
Now find their home on mine.
They murmur every day...
My grandma is gone.

When I look into the mirror I see her shape, her legs.
My grandma is gone -- yet some of her remains.
I send a card to cheer, to thank.
There she is again.

The last two months of misery and pain, she begged,
"Pray for it to end." -- so I prayed.
And when it came there was sorrow,
But more relief.

And now, weeks later, the ache and emptiness reign.
The tears stream down my face.
I weep. Too soon, too soon.

My grandma is gone.

I felt really close to my grandma tonight when I put her ducks up on the window sill from where they usually sit on the counter underneath it to photograph them. I knew I had to dig out this poem that almost wrote itself one morning in 1996, a few weeks after my grandma died.

I still miss her. She was my rock. Since my mom worked, she babysat me from the time I was 18 months old until I was seven. When we moved to California from Ohio a couple of years later, I always spent summers with her and Grandpa.

Her presence always fills my mind on her birthday, July 13, especially when it falls on a Friday like it did this year. She was born on a Friday 13, 1906 and always said it was her lucky day.