To be with the Flowers | Teen Ink

To be with the Flowers

August 22, 2011
By Noel.MCarlson66 GOLD, Waterford, Connecticut
Noel.MCarlson66 GOLD, Waterford, Connecticut
16 articles 1 photo 2 comments

Favorite Quote:
Things have to get worse before they get better.


You laid
seemingly content,
in your personal prison,
day and night.

But I saw the façade
in your eyes,
as you gazed
unseeingly
out your only portal
to the outside.

You didn’t fool me.

You longed to be free
of your pruned
aching
body.

You longed to exchange
your metal cane
for your worn
trowel
and tightly gripped blankets
for rough, dirtied
gloves.

I remember the longing
in you tired eyes.
But all I could do
was trade out my time
for your old gray trowel
and hope that it would suffice.

But now,
you reside where
flowers
are bright,
everlasting.


The author's comments:
For my Great-Grandma Helen, 12/14/2010

This is an elegy for my Great Grandmother who died last year in December. She had an extraordinary green-thumb, and after she broke her hip me, my mum, my brother and my Grandpa moved in. She was bedridden for the last 7 to 10 years of her life, and slowly, slowly, everything she had worked so hard on in the front and back yard started crinkle and die with her. She always wanted to go out there and fix them up, but she couldnt. Towards the end, she couldnt even leave her room, to make in down the hallway to her potted plants on the table near the window. Thats where I came in, and started to try and bring back everything that had disapeared with the years. I'm still trying.

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