Remembering: A Poem for Memorial Day

In America as of late, Memorial Day tends to blend with Veteran’s Day and the start of summer: so that we think the holiday is mostly about red, white and blue mixed with barbecue. But the truth is that Memorial Day began as an occasion for national grief and lament, to honor the deaths of so many dead soldiers, after the Civil War and World Wars I and II, and later, Korea, Vietnam, and Desert Storm and Iraq and Afghanistan and so many more unnamed wars where people died. 

As we stumble away from the recent years of COVID pandemic, I am still waiting for a moment of national grieving and lament. As we approach the four-year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, I am still waiting for national grieving and lament over the deaths and trauma caused by racism and white supremacy.

I wrote this poem after spending time at a senior living community, where together we remembered one of the residents who had recently died. In this moment of shared grief, we experienced healing and an opportunity for hope and new life.

Remembering

He tells me that her name was Mary

and she says that he walked her to the door

in his walker.

His face got all scrunched up,

wincing, 

when he painfully raised up his body;

leaning heavy on the arms of his chair

Wobbly Standing 

Grasping forward for support,

clutching the gray, metal walker ringed with foam

Only for a second, his hurt became visible,

A fleeting instant, and

he didn’t let her see.

He made them laugh:

stupid jokes

tricks

They start to chortle.

We cover our mouths

Our eyes are red and watering

We bite our chapped lips

Did you ever notice that laughing

and crying

both bring tears

So why is one so shameful?

Why are both so rare?

Except the tears of self-pity

streaming down taut cheeks

Tears falling from hollow eyes 

of vacant people who cannot feel

for others.

We emote in emojis.

LOL

CRYING

In person we are all so happy

and so busy

Too busy to laugh

Too busy to cry

We are cool and unruffled

Competent

OK

I have to be OK

I’m not OK

I miss him.

We pretend like we don’t remember.

What’s the alternative?

We have to keep moving forward

the invisible hand nudges

pushes, shoves, suffocates.

He shows me a photo of her:

he keeps it close, always

the photo is on his phone

taken years ago

when phones rang

and stayed in one spot

and you had to ask who was calling

and she said

It’s me

I remember her voice.

Dementia could not take

the memory of her voice.

Sonorous and full of feeling

with the long, slow A’s and O’s

and collapsed second syllable, 

swallowed silent 

like so much corn and bread and beer.

the flat and rural Midwest

decades of labor

pregnant x8, at least

I remember leather gloves

Cologne and cigarettes

A dignified wool coat

A tan hat covered in mosquito netting

Black fingernails bruised by a hammer

a sweaty face and a dripping smile

Biceps bulging out of a blue and red t-shirt

dark brown hooded sensitive eyes

He said it was the carburetor.

So much remembering

A hoarse child’s voice and blonde, shaggy hair

A gentle, patient, giving spirit, and the hell of cancer in a young mother

Folding up the wheelchair at the end of the day in high school

An agent who talked fast, worked fast, lived fast: who never knew a stranger

A colleague, a revelation, a closeness, a signed book, a probable overdose

John said in Flanders fields the poppies grow

He watched them blow 

in the breeze as he died, wheezing.

Pneumonia in a war hospital by the battlefields of France

so far from Guelph and home.

Do you remember?

When the fields were red with blood

When 17-year-old boys

died

cried

I stand in front of an airless room

My elders watch me

they are 91 and 101 and 85

They have so much to remember

I yearn to remember

I pray in halting prose

In silent spaces

the memories come

Like a crashing wave they wash over us

We can’t get out of the way

It’s bearing down 

Crushing

Loud pounding pulsating

Frothing cool refreshing

I stand, undefeated, as the tide rolls away.

I am in the humid room, but 

I am somewhere else

At the end of a dusty dirt road

the sweaty face smiles at me

He wraps me in a hug

We remember.

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