'To Make Her Smile and Keep Her in Their Game'

A friend called to chat while driving to Dallas to visit her mother. My friend is my age. Her mother is ninety-six years old. She lives on her own and only recently, after falling, did she agree to start using a cane. I’m not sure anyone is prepared to get old (or not get old). When young we’re oblivious. The elderly are easily ignored or, even better, made fun of. I didn’t know it then but as a kid I had little respect for my elders and shunned them when possible. 

My step-grandfather was an exception but he behaved like a kid. He shared with us one memory of service in Europe during World War I: having a turnip fight in a farmer’s field in France with other young soldiers. When I knew him he was perpetually, contentedly a little drunk. I never saw him angry – a rare accomplishment in my family. Kelly liked his beer and shared his heeltaps with us. He died alone in his apartment just weeks after I last visited him. He was a house painter by trade and I think he had a fairly happy life, as such things go.

 

Here's a sonnet, “The Way It Ended,” by the wonderful Louisiana poet Gail White:

 

“So time went by and they were middle-aged,

which seemed a cruel joke that time had played

on two young lovers. They were newly caged

canary birds – amused, not yet afraid.

A golden anniversary came around

where jokes were made and laughing stories told.

The lovers joined the laugh, although they found

the joke – though not themselves – was growing old.

She started losing and forgetting things.

Where had she left her keys, put down her comb?

Her thoughts were like balloons with broken strings.

Daily he visited the nursing home

to make her smile and keep her in their game.

Death came at last. But old age never came.”

 

A novel in fourteen lines. In the right hands, a poem can contain a lifetime. White comments on her poem: “Time is the strangest of the conditions we live in. Scientists, essayists, and poets can ring endless changes on this theme. Time has devastated the lives of the couple in this sonnet, but as Solomon told us long ago, love is as strong as death.”