Death's Never Easy

Death comes for us all

But the thing is

Even when we expect death.

He still somehow knows how to surprise us.

There is no easy road to here.

Where families cry and bicker and remember

Where snippets of fractured memory make up a life.

I’ve sat up for days trying to shove jigsaw pieces into a pretty frame and say- this. This is who she was and what she meant.

But that’s not necessarily the right way to do it.

So now I want to turn all these puzzles into something else

Little pieces of beautiful colored glass.

Every piece hung by a different person

And image or facet of someone we knew.

I see secret soaps as purple. A lilac. Like the pretty pressed bars of soap in the bathrooms. Only secret soaps could have been anything.

The yellows and reds from pressed flowers and stickers that made up bookmarks slipped into every bag at every holiday and get together.

The pale pinks and golds of Sunday’s church clothes.

The calming green of hymn book cover and the finger that first taught me how to follow music I didn’t know and sing proudly.

The bright fuchsia of the Christmas cactus flowers you coaxed into bloom.

The sticky toffee brown for fresh molasses cookies. Baked and put on a cake tray. Ready for us all when we arrive and a fresh dough ready to be made and topped with the crystal white of the sugar. That was my first bakers assist job.

The bright orange of the winter in a new kitchen. The year I asked for all the cookie recipes she hadn’t written down.

And the blue of the year I took down yellowed recipe cards rather than words.

It’s the bright red of the Montgomery Ward children’s books that I still read

And the tawny and gold of her writing desk that I now use to work and write on.

There are stories I want to tell.

Stories of incredible kindness and love

And a gentle strength that I only hope I’ve inherited.

I was given her name.

I was given her recipes

A voice

A spark of crafting

A love of books

And baking and food.

A love of pastels

Her rich dark hair.

I don’t think I’m ready or was ready for her to be gone.

But I’m also aware that life hadn’t been the same in years.

I couldn’t call and ask about oven temperature if it wasn’t on a card. I just had to guess.

I didn’t find new bookmarks in my books and pockets the past few years.

There were no new pins she wore that the magpie in me loved.

But I know she was a woman of unconditional love

And that was there the whole time even when she didn't remember.

And I will remember from now on.