Dead to me
It’s strange to discover a knack for writing obituaries and memorials.
While I was already writing and editing as part of my job at a book publishing company when my grandmother died, I was surprised to discover this new niche skill.
I don’t remember why it fell on me to write something to be read at her funeral mass. Did I volunteer? Was it a group effort among the granddaughters that I simply took over? However it happened, I wrote a remembrance of her it in longhand on a legal pad, propped up in a twin bed.
Her house, so imbued with her style and my memories of her, made her absence there difficult to fathom. She was still a strong presence, right down to packs of tissues tucked between sofa cushions in her ‘elbow room,’ what she called the little breakfast room off the kitchen where she had spent a lot of time. The entire downstairs, save the kitchen and bathrooms, was painted and carpeted in the same shade of pale green, including all cabinets, window frames and doors. The not unpleasant effect was a placid space in which furniture and humans seemed to float, unmoored. It was a distinctive experience and impossible to separate from her. Since graduating college, I had begun to visit her alone, flying into Kansas City for a long weekend, driving her on errands and to call on cousins or have lunch or simply sit in the elbow room and chat and read. At five o’clock during warm weather, we would set up folding patio chairs at the door of the open garage and drink some horrible overly sweet white wine while we watched the neighbors arrive home from work. They’d honk, she’d wave or toast them with her glass. Some would reappear, walking their dogs or following small kids learning to ride a bike and chat with her from the bottom of the driveway. When the traffic slowed down, we’d head inside and make dinner. Her style of cooking was also very distinctive. She didn’t follow recipes but freestyled casually and always successfully. When she was wheelchair bound, I’d do the cooking while she lightly directed me. She was a very supportive eater of others’ cooking.
but was unable to read it because I was too weepy. My sister Molly stood beside me on the altar and steadily read it from the yellow lined legal paper I’d written it on.)
The poem was based on a section from Christopher Smart’s 1758 free verse poem Jubliate Agno that begins “For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry…” The section — which gives minute consideration to Jeoffry, his daily habits, and goofy quirks — manages to imbue this worldly creature with piety and seriousness. The feline-focused passage wraps up with a nice rhythmic acceleration that I tried to emulate in my poem about my grandmother:
For God has blessed him in the variety of his movements.
For, though he cannot fly, he is an excellent clamberer.
For his motions upon the face of the earth are more than any other quadruped.
For he can tread to all the measures upon the music.
For he can swim for life.
For he can creep.
