OBSERVING GRANDMOTHER THEN & NOW

Grandmother, you sit in silence
on your kitchen work stool
stoic as the potato you are peeling.
Vacant eyes stare out north window.

North to the edge of town.
North to the cemetery
where in earlier times
we walked together,
me asking the whys of death,
you explaining plights worse than death.

You said you were not afraid of death.
I told you I was.
You were seventy.
I was only ten.

You are gone now 30 years.
I still miss you.
At age 64 I understand.
I, too, fear plights worse than death.


K K McClelland
October 19, 2002