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