Lost You

written February 15, 2022

For Mac, my grandmother.

I am told my sweet sister has your eyes,

My mother your love for babies,

And I your steady nature.

I have a skirt of yours, decorated by your own hands,

Which you no doubt loved when you were young.  

I have your sewing machine at which you spent hours, years,

From before you were married until you could no longer sew.

Grief is a strange thing:

I shed no tears when you passed on eight years ago,

Yet now I can’t stop doing so.

How can I mourn you I never knew?

By the time I was old enough to know,

Disease had already changed you.

I was whisked away by circumstances,

And I chose to be away later, after you passed.

I thought I was being responsible

When in reality I was being foolish.

You are a part of me, my blood, my history;

I feel I have lost part of myself.

How can I be so grieved about you I never loved?

Yet it is that very fact, that I never grew to love you

That brings tears of sadness now:

I lost you before I loved you.

---

---