The Casting Off, The Dying

(For the real Memorial Day, today)

The casting off, the dying
That begins at birth, she counts loss.
To start with, her childhood, standing

At wood stove at four to stir oatmeal
For too many brothers & too many sisters.
One brother missing in action in Korea,

Doubt like earwigs eating through her brain,
Waiting to hear, wondering.
& two brother’s heart attack much later.

Her father drowning in fluids of his lungs,
As he had drowned in alcohol
Life his heart couldn’t cope with.

Her sister, whose husband erased her mind
But kept her soul & body.
Her mother, whose mind fled first,

& soul, then body,
Which lay in the back of the car
While husband banged for fifteen minutes

On locked Emergency Room door
& she honked car horn
Hoping to wake anyone inside

Or her mother. & then older sister
Who suicided in millimeters
By injecting insulin to eat dessert,

Undertaker officiously waiting
Until everyone had gathered who
Was going to gather

To close the casket, & lock it
Guaranteed for fifty years to keep
Outsides out, insides in,

In full view with a Click,
A finality that turned her heart to prune
In contrast to her greatest loss,

Her only grandchild whose father, her son-in-law
Ordered him cremated after the accident
Of falling from roof onto pavement

Three stories hard below
Without seeing him & not really sure
He really died. Her heart was briefly sawdust

& that was the biggest
Casting off since three brother Lee
Whose appendix burst before the doctor.

Slow cutting off
Before casting off entirely
When husband had a stroke,

& amputation below the knee
& it didn’t heal & amputation above the knee.
& casting off entirely with casket closed

After visitation the night before the funeral.
& she didn’t see. But her heart
Was only a raisin then anyway.

& her breast. & modesty
For which she compensated
By wearing two shirts.

She sits filing fingernails,
Her best feature
After too many permanents

& too many castings off,
& inventories. Losses which
Begin at birth.