The man walks down the lane Between the rows of elms he planted To the mailbox by the dusty road Opens the door on the box Empty No letter from his girl His first born child so little at birth Tears had come to his eyes Fearing for her life But she survived and grew Smart as a whip A good girl Now off in the city Gone to college Too busy to write The man turns Empty handed Chores to do in the barn No foreshadowing Of the stroke that will come In the spring Kristin Moyer For my grandfather
I have a page torn from an autograph book that says something like “When years have passed and I am old, you will be my leaves of gold.” My grandmother wrote it two years before she died of brain cancer. My mother was twelve years old. I found it a few years ago, long after my mother had died as well. I’ll never know whether my grandmother was healthy when she wrote it, or in denial of what was to come, but the timing is eerie.
Thank you for sharing this, Lynn. Very haunting. I think about the animals in Berry’s poem…”who do not tax themselves with forethought of grief.” My grandfather was 60 when he died; he married late, was struck by the thunderbolt while visiting his sister on her farm in Minnesota, met a young pretty widow with a toddler visiting her brother on a nearby farm.
Kristin,
Profound. Expecially because I am in kind of a grief process right now. Thanks!
I am sorry for your loss, dear friend. I think we humans have been given the gift of speech so we can share our stories of love and loss, and be comforted.