Bill Roberts, Poet

A Day at the Beach

Tuesday, March 30th, 2010

Father Guido is only about thirty

so he hasn’t had quite enough years

to really get to know Mary,

my mother-in-law, whose funeral

service he’s guiding this cold morning.

Of course, when he visited with her

over the past four years they gabbed

but never quite made contact

because Mary’s communication system

had irreparably malfunctioned:

Alzheimer’s, the great divider.

He’s happily chatting away now up there

in the pulpit about another important

old lady in his life, his grandmother,

whose home at the beach in New Jersey

he loved to visit until she introduced

him to death at age eight, about the same

time he was getting close with God.

He told God he wouldn’t stay with his

grandmother any more if He’d let her

live, and he found out that God

doesn’t make deals like that.

It was a nice story, put a lighter touch

on the funeral.  Mary would have loved it.

I know she would have loved Father

Guido, too.  After the funeral, we all

went for a drive to the beach.

(Published in the Piedmont Literary Review, Vol, XXII, Number 2, 1999)

Note:  Another poem about my dear mother-in-law, Mary Kjersgaard, one of the true loves of my life.  It was a painful four years for Irene and me while Mary wound down to that dreaded invader, Alzheimer’s.  She’s been gone for quite a few years now, but never forgotten.  Her joyous, loving spirit still sustains us.

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