Reflections

Memorial

When we went to NY to mourn and celebrate the lives of my grandparents, I got to spend some quality time with my aunties (all who are from my mom's side, but still knew and loved Jane & Joe and came to support us THANK YOU!). Here you see aunts: Cynthia, Dianne, Tina, and Katherine. It was so wonderful to be together.

Here are the 2 poems I read at the memorial service. "The Gardener" is quite old and "The Machinist" is new.

The Gardener

Grandma bends in the garden, emerged in her leafy green world.
With her hands she nurtures and loves the soil
in the way that she loved her children: my father, my uncles, grown, rooted.
She still flows through them, and teaches them how the seasons illustrate their days.
The veins in her fingers are life lines to the Elephant Ears and bean leaves,
the arteries from her heart give rise to the tomato seedlings.
Grandma’s gift to make things grow shows us how to grow.
Her life teaches us how to love the earth, how to love each other.
And while lines of time echo in her face, they give me a sense of expression,
her unique sparkle that I hope I someday know.

Like a single leaf reveals a map of the anatomy of rainforests and rivers,
like a solitary flower divulges the secrets of the migration of birds,
I look at my hands and I know she is in me too-
her fiery soul at peace in the garden.


The Machinist

My grandfather, with his larger-than-Thor hands
could make the tiniest parts whir miraculously.

His palms, wide like Lake Victoria. His Nile digits, long,
constructed like a hand should be, with substance and authority.
His were hands of the gods, appearing almost cumbersome
and surprising everyone with their grace and fluidity.
They could manipulate the most intricate pieces and
unfathomable tools, utensils for elves.
He could give metal bits and bolts purpose.
He could make sprockets and washers part of something
grander than what they were when they were alone.
He could give them life.

The machinist with the Saharan fingerprints
made my head so small when he held my face.
With the moons in his fingernails he could hold the universe.
He held his family and showed us that we too were
something grander together than when we were alone.

When he died we gathered all the little bits of his life we could find.
I’m putting them together like a machinist.
And the love interwoven in every piece, in each detailed moment,
is whirring miraculously.

Erica Schlaffer