Life defies death

It is quite amazing. It was seven years ago tonight that I got the call that told me that you would be leaving us. It is amazing that after seven years of your absence, I still have to convince myself that you are gone.

I dream about you often. And in those dreams we are enjoying ourselves, and then it dawns on me. "Mom," I say, "you're dead. How can you be here? This can't be happening..." The last time I had that dream you said, "Yeah, I know. But I just wanted to be here to enjoy this time with you." Then I woke up, and again, had to force myself to remember, to view the images in my memory, the funeral, you in the casket, Faith arriving from Mexico with the baby...

I am so glad that you were the kind of person who was so alive that it defies the reality of death.

For Mama

The garden,
The cradle,
And the home.
Here you found your place
Your quiet, your joy, your peace.
As much as you could be content
You found contentment here.

The rose
Its fragrance, its hue, its curve
And its thorns.
The simplest of your pleasures
Yet we remember you by this.

The babe
The softness, the coos, the love
And the tears.
Love was never easy, but it was true
And you did not hold back.

The house
Your things, your warmth, your style
Everywhere, your touch
While handling your treasures
and everyday toys
We value only that they gave you joy.


The garden, the cradle and the home,
Mama, my memories yet burn,
And still my heart breaks.
And every pleasure I enjoy
Is pierced by the thought,
“I learned that joy from her.”

Leeann Andrade-Kelley
Mother’s Day 2001

with roses
November 7

we buried your body
with roses,
we pulled them from the top
of the casket and in wild
abandonment
to grief
we threw them in, then
quietly walked outside.

Josh should have read
the service, they should have seen
our tears, they should have heard
our longing, but
this one thing we did
right, we sent
your body to the
grave in
roses.


Leeann Andrade-Kelley
November 2002

And so I begin

Stepping out in the night I smell the chill, and I feel the a sadness, it is familiar thing, and then I realize, "Oh, it's October". It is October, it is my month, my season to relive that day when I joined the society of the broken hearted. Those who would start to feel the impulse to call someone on the phone, and suddenly realize they would not answer. Those who would go to the cemetery on holidays. And who would always notice someone's absence at every happy event.


But how I thank God that she died in October, when everything around me tells of the beauty of the end of her days.

Poplar
Comfort take comfort in beauty
Yellow, so yellow shining bright.
Collecting light and passing it on
Even on sunless days you shine.

Yellow, so yellow shining bright
Brave and graceful against the sky.
Even on sunless days you shine.
Autumn, such a sweet time to die.

Brave and graceful against the sky
Blazing, blazing reaching high.
Autumn, such a sweet time to die
When brightest colors shine at last

Blazing, blazing reaching high.
Shudder, shake, and then you fly
When brightest colors shine at last
Your love in truest form.

Shudder, shake and then you fly
We breathless, helpless watch you die
Your love in truest form
Your glory in Autumn still shines

We breathless, helpless watch you die
Comfort take comfort in beauty
Your glory in Autumn still shines
Collecting light and passing it on.

Leeann Andrade-Kelley
October 31, 2002

She had lived a hard life in her youth, struggled as a young wife and suffered much as a mother. And her bitterness not only ate at her heart, it ate at ours as well. But as she aged she began to appreciate her life, and embrace her joys with gratitude. She began to choose rightly, and maybe even forgive. And her choices made all the difference. When she left us she had grown beautiful and worthy of praise.

Judith Ann Andrade

October 21, 1934 - October 31, 2000

Mother

Surely yours was the first face I saw

Yours was the first voice I longed to hear

And my first fear was a world without you in it.

It was you who showed me

what love looked like

You withheld from me no good thing

that you were able to give.

For love of me

you endured what other could

not or would not

And I praise you for it.

Surely yours was the first face I saw

Yours was the first voice I longed to hear

And my first fear was a world without you in it.

Leeann Andrade Kelley

May 1999

I as a geriatric nurse can appreciate the suddenness of her departure. I appreciate the mercy granted us and her. That we knew she was happy and loved us, and that she had enjoyed her day. Still it is hard that I was not there to say good-bye. And these days when a patient dies, I still step out of the room and cry for the loss of that last moment with her.

Not as an old boat rotting
The river slowly moves by the town
On one side concrete and boardwalk,
on the other, rocks
an old and forbidding
dock and aged boats
pushed to the side
rotting.

Last days of September,
the lofty poplar looks down
still green, ignoring the coming fall
the coming chill.
She is deaf to the whistle
shrieking high above the din
blind to bright shorts and jerseys
and black-spotted ball.
She is deaf, she is blind
but does she know?

Below, closer to the bank
there are splashes of
yellow among the green.
Just a little further up from here
just beyond the pale lines
and curves of the bridge,
trees whose name I do not know
are giving it up slowly.
Leaf by leaf they change.

But the poplar--
the poplar hangs on to her green!
if you had not the memory
you would never know
that soon her day will come
and she will give it up
like one brilliant flame
on one gray and dull day
she will explode in light
the winds will come
and she will go away,
on the last day of October.

Leeann Andrade-Kelley

October 2002