(For Natalie Constance Kellen Green Anderson)

In Memoriam
      By JoHannah P. Green

For 5 months after you died
I visited your grave each day.
I watered the sprouting grass
and pulled the dandelions.
I brought your favorite flowers
and watered them with my tears.
The child within me
-your child-
waited to hear your voice on the wind.
But the wind does not carry
from the place where you have gone
to the place where I sit in sorrow.
You are not here.
I worry that the salt of my tears
has washed away the bond between
our hearts.

I go to the house where you raised us all,
and hear the echo of your voice,
and smell the scent of your perfume,
but,
as much as my heart desires it,
you are not there.
I worry that the salt of my tears
has dissolved the glue
that held our family together.

I look for you
and call your name down the
hallways of memory,
down the hallways of my heart.
You do not answer me.
You are not there.

So, I plant a garden
and the fruiting plants remind me of you,
picking green beans,
dressed in summer shorts
and short-sleeved blouse,
(the one with the faded flowers),
and you are here
with me,
picking the beans for dinner,
My hands and yours together.

In my kitchen
I make the Italian pasta salad
with fresh basil and tomatoes
black olives and feta cheese,
and find you there
sitting at my kitchen table,
laughing until you cry, at the silliest jokes
and stories we tell over and over
(walking to a country school, in a blizzard,
ten miles, uphill, both ways.)

At Christmas we bake and decorate sugar cookies
carefully, ornately, with yellow garlands of icing
piped onto the dark green trees, and sprinkles.
And you are there,
watching us work with your cookie cutters
and rolling pin.

I have lunch with my sister - your daughter -
and you sit with us.
You are there,
and we all laugh and tease each other.
You are there in her beautiful face,
her kind eyes, her giving heart.
Here you are. Right here

I could not find you at the graveside,
nor could I hear your voice in that
garden of stone.
I do not know in what corner of the Universe,
what group of stars, you walk now,
what heaven could be large enough to house
your loving heart.
But I know now
whenever I miss you
I will call my sister
or walk in the garden or make
banana bread or treat another kindly
because it is the right thing to do,
and there I will see your smile
and hear your voice.
You have not gone,
you are right here.