All Saint’s Day

Today we remember those have were here and have passed. I wrote this the year after my grandmother died. Just a few years before we’d lost my husband’s parents. Somehow it was a relief to have had no losses that year.

All Saint’s Day 

Four years since we last stood here with the preacher amidst the crowd,

but this visit to the grave is for simple remembrance endowed,

as he delivers his All Saint’s Day rap,

while the girl before me fiddles with her strap,

and the other one plucks leaf stems to make rings,

while I blink away the tears and seek distracting things.

The sermon catches my attention above the trickling stream,

about their work being finished and God is there for us, giving.

They’re not dead, it’s just a different place they’re living.

He reads the names of those who passed this year.

Again tears rush with thoughts of Granny, who is no longer here.

I seek comfort in the thought that she has no more decisions to make.

She is finished. I pray she finds her way and then hear him say:

“They’re with God”. A loving smile sneaks to my lips,

as I recall how faithfully she attended mass,

even to the last, high mass in Latin on the radio,

rudely interrupted by a well-meaning translator,

But she enjoyed it as best she could.

Distraction imagines my name being read.

Wonder about the designated year

and who will be standing here.

Here before the last plot next to the stream,

choking tears of remembrance and loss, which seem

to stir up the wave of post-departure events in my mind,

Leaving images and major changes in loved one’s lives behind.