Mother’s Day Roses from Jill — Photo-artistry by kenne
The Gardener
Have I lived enough? Have I loved enough? Have I considered Right Action enough, have I come to any conclusion? Have I experienced happiness with sufficient gratitude? Have I endured loneliness with grace?
I say this, or perhaps I’m just thinking it. Actually, I probably think too much.
Then I step out into the garden, where the gardener, who is said to be a simple man, is tending his children, the roses.
. . . Recognizing that she was not always old, so here are two when she was in her late teens. A thanks to Joanna for asking if I had any pictures of Mother when she was young.
(The following was originally written and posted September 5, 2012.)
Willie Agnes Poe passed away (September 8, 2006) after three months fighting post-surgery infection. During the last few weeks of Mother’s life, she shared stories of her childhood and often talked about playing with her close childhood friend, Fern. (They remained close throughout life.)
“We had so much fun playing in the cemetery — Can you take me back to the cemetery on the hill?’ she would ask. “I can see the man in black with a big black dog,” she would go on.
In her last days, the man in black visited her. As we were talking, she looked straight ahead, “…see him, he is here! Don’t you see him?” Then she would turn and ask, “Can you bring me a big black dog? I want a big dog! Can you get one for me?”
“Yes, we can,” would be my reply, We were making arrangements for Jill to bring one of their black labs by for Mother, just two days before she passed on.
On August 26, 2012, the family gathered in The Woodlands to celebrate the life of Willie Agnes Poe, which involved a brunch at Cru’ Wine Bar and a gathering at the pedestrian bridge over Grogan’s Mill Road.
After moving to The Woodlands in the mid-1980’s, Mother would walk the trails from her Grogan’s Landing apartment, which included the pedestrian bridge in a six-mile walk around the TPC golf course. Over time, Mother became functionally blind, limiting the trail walking, but not her walking. Early each morning she would spend a couple of hours walking back and forth over the pedestrian bridge. Our gathering at the bridge ended with a symbolic walk over Agnes’ bridge.
Why this celebration now? Because Mother had donated her body to the Texas Medical Center after her death, we didn’t have a family gathering to celebrate her life. It was our understanding that Mother’s ashes would be sent to us 2-3 years after her death. As it turned out, we didn’t receive her ashes till this past May.
Hall Cemetary
Several months after Mother’s death we got word that her brother, J.C. had died. I knew immediately we were going to Alabama. How I know just how important it was to bring closure on the Mother’s life. While in Alabama, Joy and I made a point of going to Lincoln, then two miles out to the country church and cemetery in Refuge. She was always at her happiest when talking about her childhood in Alabama, even more so during her last days with us. She always wanted to go back but knew she would only be able to in her vision of those childhood memories. It doesn’t go unnoted that with the importance of Hall Cemetery in Refuge, Alabama, Mother didn’t desire to be buried there. For her, a higher priority was to give her body to medicine.
While visiting Hall Cemetery, I wanted so to turn around and see two little girls playing in the cemetery on the hill – to see the man in black with the big dog – to hear the laughing, and see the joy when the big dog came running to the children. Instead, Joy and I walked silently, on this sunny fall morning through the small cemetery on the hill, which now represents the burial-place of the last surviving member of the Confederate army. As fate would have it, as we walked through Hall Cemetery, a black dog appeared.
By making the journey to Hall Cemetery, I have for my life captured the feeling of two little girls laughing and playing in a world that never vanished from Mother’s vision of happiness. Real or not, it was real for her – now it is real for me, and I might add, Joy.
kenne
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A Celebration Of Life
“When the child was a child, it didn’t know It was a child Everything for it was filled with life and all life was one When the child, when the child The child, child, child, child, child And on and on and on and on, etc. And onward With a sense of wonder Upon the highest hill. Upon the highest hill When the child was a child Are you there Shassas, shassas Up on a highest hill When the child was a child, was a child, was a child Was a child, was a child, was a child, etc. … and it’s still quivering there today”
—from, Song of Being A Child. Music by Van Morrison, Words by Peter Handke
As we near Mother’s Day, 2015, much will be written, gifts given and loved shared. Remembering Mother is truly a daily exercise in life. Over the last ten years, this blog has had many postings on mothers. One of my favorite poems about mothers is one by Billy Collins, titled, “The Lanyard.”
THE LANYARD
The other day as I was ricocheting slowly off the blue walls of this room bouncing from typewriter to piano from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor, I found myself in the “L” section of the dictionary where my eyes fell upon the word, Lanyard. No cookie nibbled by a French novelist could send one more suddenly into the past. A past where I sat at a workbench at a camp by a deep Adirondack lake learning how to braid thin plastic strips into a lanyard. A gift for my mother. I had never seen anyone use a lanyard. Or wear one, if that’s what you did with them. But that did not keep me from crossing strand over strand again and again until I had made a boxy, red and white lanyard for my mother. She gave me life and milk from her breasts, and I gave her a lanyard She nursed me in many a sick room, lifted teaspoons of medicine to my lips, set cold facecloths on my forehead then led me out into the airy light and taught me to walk and swim and I in turn presented her with a lanyard. “Here are thousands of meals” she said, “and here is clothing and a good education.” “And here is your lanyard,” I replied, “which I made with a little help from a counselor.” “Here is a breathing body and a beating heart, strong legs, bones and teeth and two clear eyes to read the world.” she whispered. “And here,” I said, “is the lanyard I made at camp.” “And here,” I wish to say to her now, “is a smaller gift. Not the archaic truth, that you can never repay your mother, but the rueful admission that when she took the two-toned lanyard from my hands, I was as sure as a boy could be that this useless worthless thing I wove out of boredom would be enough to make us even.”
Mother, Grandmother, Great-Grandmother, Agnes. 
Hall Cemetary
