It's kind of a cliché, but it's true: you never really appreciate people until they're gone. I pretty much spent most of my adult life working for my sister at an outpatient surgery center. Over ten hours a day for close to 20 years. Then she got very sick. Then she died.
Now, as I sit in a laundromat typing this post, I think of how I would give almost anything to spend just ten more minutes with her, to tell her about her niece being accepted into medical school, her nephew starting college on Monday. To have my sister look over her glasses at me one more time because of something stupid I said or did. To be her little brother one more time.
Sharon Olds and her grandmother . . .
Grandmother Love Poem
by: Sharon Olds
I'd take her out from the nursing home
for a chaser and two bourbons. She'd crack
a joke sharp as a tin lid
hot from the teeth of the can-opener,
and cackle her crack-corn laugh. Next to her
wit, she prided herself on her hair,
snowy and abundant. She would lift it up
at the nape of the neck, there in the bar,
and under the white, under the salt-and-
pepper, she'd show me her true color,
the color it was when she was a bride:
like her sex in the smoky light she would show me
the pure black.
If there's one lesson I've learned in life it's this: be kind and say "I love you" a lot. Both of those things cost nothing but mean so much. That might sound easy. Sentimental. Silly even. Maybe you heard your kindergarten teacher tell you the same thing a long time ago, or maybe it was your mom or dad.
The problem is that people forget. Life steps in, and, suddenly, you're 57 and have lost loved one after loved one. Kindness becomes not the rule, but the exception. You go for days--weeks? months?--without saying "I love you" or having "I love you" said to you. You don't know your neighbors or coworkers or the person who takes your money at the grocery store. You've made yourself into an island, and you've stranded yourself there.
Tonight, thinking of my sister, I want everyone reading this post to know that you are loved. Perhaps you feel like you're unworthy of that love, that you've done things in your life that are simply unforgiveable. I've been there. Or maybe you're in such a dark space that you can't even imagine light of any kind touching you again. I've been there, too. I see you.
Be kind to yourself. Reach out to someone--even if it's the lady sitting in the seat next to you at the laundromat, scrolling on her phone. At the end of the day, it isn't hatred or anger that's everlasting. It's love. That lady on her phone might need to know that she's important. That the world is a better place with her in it.
And, if you need to hear it right now, listen to these words: the world IS a better place because of you. Hold onto that, because it's true. Don't judge. Don't allow yourself to be judged. Just the tiniest word of cruelty or love can move mountains. Choose love.
Saint Marty writes about loving neighbors, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:
In 1949, Los Angeles documented its first recorded snowfall. Choose a city you are familiar with and write a poem about something you can't imagine happening there. It can relate to weather or be an event no one would expect. For example, you could write a poem in which all of Seattle's coffee shops go out of business and they begin selling steamed seawater. You could write a poem in which all New Yorkers wear flip-flops, or Las Vegas decides to turn off its lights Easter Weekend and instead offers an outside prayer service, or maybe Texas decides it's had enough of the cowboy hat and insists all ranchers now wear plaid berets. Use your imagination and see where your poem goes.
Streets of Gold
by: Martin Achatz
Churches sprout like dandelions in my hometown--
two Catholic, four Lutheran, one Methodist, one
Assembly of God, an Old Fashioned Baptist,
a Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, two non-
denominational, and an Episcopal. In the old days,
when Moses was in the bulrushes, angels would often
knock on doors, beg for dinner and a room to spend
the night. More often than not, extra matzah
would be thrown in the pot, another goat or chicken
slaughtered, and the angels would fill their bellies
then be escorted to the best room in the house
where fresh sheets had been smoothed on the mattress,
chocolate left on the pillow, the youngest son or daughter
offered as a companion. Hospitality marked the homes
of the most devout, the ones who were safe from being
changed into pillars of salt or drowned in floods
or incinerated by the finger of God. As I was walking
my dog this afternoon, I passed an old man bundled
in boots, winter jacket, scarf wrapped around his head.
I paused, wondered at the bony humps of his shoulders,
as if he was wearing football pads. I wished the man
a good day, let him reach down, scratch my dog's
ears. As I turned away, I felt a rush of wind
at my back, heard the sound of 1000 flags snapping
in my ears. My dog started singing "Ave Maria"
as we continued on.
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