This morning, my grandmother sat me down over tea and told me, very earnestly, that she'd been talking to my aunt about her funeral and what she wanted for it. She told me that she doesn't like speeches at funerals, but that there was something she really wanted instead.
She asked me if I, and if I didn't think I could do it, my mom, was willing to read out a poem I've written. It's a poem I wrote for my mother in which I ask a very fundamental question: What makes a mother?
I nearly teared up then and there and, of course, said yes. I'm still a little shaky just thinking about it.
My grandmother is an incredibly strong, intelligent, beautiful woman who'll be ninety years old next month and, her own words, still has some living to do.
I know that my poetry has touched her deeply. One of the very, very few times I've seen her cry was when I gave her a book with those of my poems she liked most, handwritten inside. To know that something I've written has touched someone this deeply though, this profoundly, that is something else. And not just someone either, but this woman. This strong, intelligent, wise, beautiful woman whom I've spend my life looking up to and admiring as a role model. That my words, my sentences, my thoughts, touched her so deeply that she would have us remember her by them... That is something incredible and very nearly unbelievable to me.
This is a poem, mind, that I have never published. That I have never emailed to anyone. That I have written down on a card and given to my mother, and that I have written down in a book and given to my grandmother, and that is written down in my personal book of my poetry, but that has never been distributed otherwise. Because this is their poem and their story, and my story, written in my words. And to know that this poem is what my grandmother wants to be remembered by... That is something I have yet to find words for.
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