After voting today, I passed a funeral procession, and the first line of the poem below came to me.
As I finished the drive home, I remembered one of my grad school professors, Wayne Brown, giving a eulogy for a friend of his who died during our program.
I don’t remember the entire tribute, but what has stuck with me for nearly 20 years is his emphasis on how, when we die, people tend to erase the parts of us that made us human: our mistakes, our lies, our secrets.
Wayne has since passed, too. I think about him a lot, not only when I’m reading or writing, but when I’m thinking about death. My death, particularly.
I can’t remember the last time I wrote a poem. I certainly never wrote one in grad school. And I would never (ever) identify as a poet (poems are far too difficult).
Nevertheless, I wrote one today. And in this moment, I’m feeling brave enough to share it.
Obituary
I hope there is no funeral when I die.
Grieving, I hope, is inevitable
once I’ve left those I’ve loved and healed and hurt.
No embalming, no fancy car rides to the grave.
No insisting I was saintly.
Instead, I hope for memories
that come in the quiet and the catastrophes.
That sneak up uninvited and stay just a bit too long.
And then pass, like my body,
to that place no one here really knows.
