This was the poem that I wrote for my Grandmother, Foy Bragg, before she passed away from lung cancer in 2006.  Basically, this poem became her eulogy at her funeral--easily one of my best pieces.

I miss her a lot.

If you smoke--fucking quit already--there are people who love you and don't want to watch you suffer.

Enough of me on my soapbox...

An Elegy Made in Good Faith

I am caught somewhere between lament and cornbread,
my feet sink in the loam of meal and egg comfort
as I try to stuff my mouth to muffle the cries
and salient droplets of me leaking onto the gray tile-
for I know love will never taste as good again;
like a last note in a song the first time you hear it-
memorable and melodic, being so on high
and down home at the same split second and beaming
like you would do-so vigilant, in your kitchen chair;
a candle drawing us back to the hearth inside
where we could war over marbles for your love,
and now we are a story losing it's beginning;
dwelling on all the miserable in the ditch,
near the one time dirt road; orange clay-caked and smoky-
all unimaginable and Lovecraftian sans foi
heart-wrenched, gut torn monstrosities plaguing bowels
and shading under porticos, smoldering hot
like the grilled cheese sandwiches you would make for us
oozing in our loss, that that time for nurturing has been
and come and gone and nature has taken finality
and stabbed our eyes with asphyxiating clarity-
you tried your best, keeping all the tumblers unlocked,
all our secrets we would whisper to you, you'd pass
around the picnic table-a phone game of whispers:

"the only friends you need in life are your family"

and somehow that message would always get misplaced
but you'd manage to catch us in my mother's
mother's mother's pink colander to dry us off,
saturation being the familiar cross we bare-
some of your last wishes will be carried out today:

"take a look around this room, everyone here loves you.
You know you love everyone around this room too."

We thank you for dancing our dirty clothes clean.
We thank you for the unending toil of mending torn pants.
We thank you for loving your husband-and not Elvis.
We thank you for planting your stubborn feet firmly
so we could prosper-all the fruits borne of your tree.

                                                    In Loving Memory of Foy May Bragg

© Steve Ekstrom 2006