Eulogies

          I

Your words to my lips to their hearts:
What you speak from your soul
I would seek to, strive to understand
That they, your audience, would feel
More than hear what I say,
That I, your agent, would sing
More than simply recite,
That you, my brother, would be in spirit here
To touch their hearts directly
And make some subtle difference
To the beat of their lives
In the slow, sometimes painful dance of time,
That we could render this poem complete:
Your soul to my song to their beat.

          II

She lives in your warm smile

     and your easy laugh,

     your purposeful hugs;

She lives in the way you keep house

     and home and family together,

     in the part of you too that would see the world;

She is in your eyes and all they have seen,

     in your hands resting gently on tired shoulders,

     in your heart of tender steel;

She drives with you through Minnesota,

     away from the cities and farms

     to where the trees turn birch

     and the lakes become personal;

She stands with you at the front door,

     welcoming, and again

     with your smile your laugh your hugs;

She will be forever the reason

     you are cousin, sister, brother,

     the ones to call her grandma,

     the man who named her Bunny;

She will linger

     in your lefse heritage, your Norwegian souls,

     in the percolating aromas of morning coffee

     in the happy of happy hour;

She will resonate

     in your day to day testimony,

     your quiet evening prayer,

     the hymn you hum.

Once she was the one

     who worked the lathe

     and weaved rugs

     and moved heavy stones to a beachfront dock;

It was not long ago

     she paddled a canoe

     and cleaned the fish we caught;

     not so long ago we drove to Idaho

And she worked crossword puzzles

     and knitted sweaters

     and baked pies and cookies

She would gently massage the knots out of your neck

     without you ever asking

     and one day she leaned over me in my chair

     and said I am so happy you are here.

Now you hike through the woods

     and walk a beast of a dog;

     you find your lifelong companion

     and you keep planting trees

     and watching them grow;

And you travel the world

     and you never run out of places to go

     but you keep coming home

To sit on the deck, to watch

     the rising sun, the setting sun

     or in the house by the hearth

     you watch the fire

And you will hold this as long as you can,

     maybe you will glimpse heaven,

     or simply appreciate the moment

But you will smile

     and she will live on in your smile.

          III

Everything is a gift, from rising sun
to evening set: we are given heaven’s light
even as we journey into night,
and come to find another day is done;
the fires in the sky keep burning on
like memories, refusing to forget
how much we have been given, from evening set
to breaking dawn, and how much we carry on.

Some gifts will not be easy to accept
and I don’t know yet what tomorrow brings,
but every nightfall is a gift: believe
that heaven’s grace endures most in the things
we fail to see and struggle to accept
but slowly find the presence to receive.