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.
