Mike’s Wait Is Over

Last night, i sat outside and hurriedly wrote of Mike Dixon’s passing. As i noted, it was a tough night.

i think i have corrected all of the errors that were originally in that post.

This morning, i began to consider how to deal with Mike not being there when i go home (or perhaps he will be there when i really go home). i returned to a poem i have posted here before when other friends and family have left for the other side if not too soon, sooner than i hoped. This poem is for me, written after observing my parents in their early nineties.

There is one less of us waiting tonight. So my wait will be more difficult. Hopefully, repeating this poem will make it a bit easier:

Waiting Grace

the old folks sit in the too warm room,
television images blink randomly,
the mute button silences the room
although they do not know as the hearing aids
lie on their respective tables with other
paraphernalia required for the elderly;
they sit knowing the time will come soon:
waiting grace.
Noble,
Sad,
All is right with the world.
They and the remaining few of their generation
know how to demonstrate
waiting grace.
No threat, no fret, no fear
shows in their countenance:
they do what they can and
what they can decreases perceptively daily,
faculties fade and with the fading,
the joys of their industry escaping slowly:
waiting grace.
They have endured the test of time when
times were harder and
simpler and
they hold to those codes of right and
simplicity and
goodness to the neighbor, friend and
to service:
waiting grace.

 

1 thought on “Mike’s Wait Is Over

  1. I like the poem. The words and the pace of the poem are powerfully evocative of the many times since childhood that we, you and I, have sat in that room with the old folks. How very fascinating it is to feel and observe oneself gradually become one of them – the old folks. My brother, Norman, now is thoroughly and irrevocably one of the old folks. Soon enough so will I be.

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