My Grief, All Mine

Get Funky

Your brain was connected to your feet and that's not true for everybody. Sometimes women left my dance aerobics class crying because they couldn't execute on the downbeat no matter how hard they tried. But the first time you saw it you got it.

After that first class I remember going home and telling my husband, “Louise Gluck has a great sense of rhythm!” and he looked at me like, Duh, of course she does.

The happiest I ever saw you was when you were dancing. Oh, the joy! 

Apology

I wonder if you thought someday I'd write something called Driving Miss Louise. If you did I'm sure the thought made you cringe like the rhyming verse I recited in the car made you cringe. Remember how you'd join in and snarl out the predictable final rhyme? Remember The Ballad of East and West? I am so sorry I did that to you.

She Offered

You read and kindly critiqued every unpublished piece of fiction I'd written. Your positive feedback was as generous as the huge trees in your front yard. 

But one time out of nowhere, like it had just come to mind and tried your patience again, you said, “You actually had a ‘she offered.'”

Montpelier

State Street storefronts loom like empty tombs. Dark windows mirror dead sidewalks and starting today I picture your ghost there too. 

A few people stand around open doorways. Their gestures say they're making plans. This flooded town will come back but you are really gone this time. 

I mourn. “Life goes on,” I imagine you would say. “It's diminished but it goes on. What did you expect?”