Broken Heart Montana

I just got home from a family reunion in Montana. Like it goes in our family, it wasn't really a planned reunion, and was therefore complete chaos. I got to see all of my cousins but 3, and my parents were the only ones missing from their generation (and I see them all the time). It was missing my grandma. But Grandpa was there. He's almost 94. He kept saying he wished he were 80 again, which I thought was funny. In a lot of ways he's still his spry, witty self, full of good stories and smiles and conspiracy theories. He's beginning to fade, though, and it breaks my heart.
It's always hard to leave. I choked up when we left the nursing home (he just moved there a few months ago), with the constant realization that it could be the last time I see him, the last time I say goodbye. He's a great man, despite his many flaws, and there aren't a lot of people like Alvin left in the world.
I wanted to stay longer. I wanted hours with each family member, time to talk and remember and catch up. I love my cousins so much, each one of them, and I'm happy that we're all still a part of each others' lives. I wanted those days to last forever. We stayed up late into the night and early in the morning talking and playing games, but it just wasn't enough. I crave time with those people who came from the same place I did, cut out of the Montana sky, familiar with suffering and restlessness, who share the wild spirit of wild country, who like the same jokes and movies, who love the same people, who understand parts of our childhood that no one else does. I wanted more time to walk on those windy hills in the young wheat fields, to take pictures of the sunsets, to show my kids the hidden beauty of the prairie. To pick wildflowers and run my fingers through the dirt, and swim in the river, and just be part of the land.
Mostly I wanted more time to sit with Grandpa. It was hard to be there with so many others who I wanted to see, because I had to split time. I couldn't just sit adn listen to him forever. He was tired a lot, too. But I wish I could just record every moment, every word he says. Soon that quiet voice will fade into history, and his wrinkled fingers will let go of the life he led there, and there will be 21 of us to carry on with his memories, to write them and tell them, and try to live out the things he passed down to us. He isn't gone yet, but the window is narrowing, and his memory is fading, and I don't want to let it go without fighting a little longer to remember and record it, and enjoy it.
I wrote this poem last year when I left, and I kept thinking about it. It's so hard to say goodbye.

Whispering Goodbye

And maybe I’ll always remember them that way

The grandparents

Standing there, waving in the driveway

As the station wagon pulls out down that long gravel road

The mile that passes, and me, still checking over my shoulder to see that they’re there

Barking dogs trailing behind.

That’s how it went every year

We’re waving out the windows

Saying goodbye to sunflowers and the sweet scent of alfalfa and dirt

Saying goodbye to those who loved us

Her, with her beautiful smile, walking in grace, even in the winter of her life

With a walker on the porch one year

And then never again.

And now him, the Old Man Patriarch

Standing there alone

With two fingers in the air, whispering out goodbye.

Wild Rose

Three years are gone now, memories still bright

Of your jokes and your poems and stories

The laughter in your eyes,

Your generosity and pure love and your peace

Three years have passed since I saw your smile

Or heard your gentle voice say hello

Or watched you wave goodbye.

And my mind knows you’re gone

I feel it in your empty house

But my heart can’t seem to let go.

I wish we’d had more time

I remember you like I’m still a child

Sitting on the couch and listening

And I miss the phone calls and the letters

And slow Scrabble games at the table

And those blue bonnet eyes, glistening

To me you were always like a wild rose

A beauty that struggled and grew in the wiles and the wind

Of Montana wheat

The thorns did not hurt you, but held you up

And with your faith you did not wither

You were my grandma but also my friend

Shining bright in the prairie sun

And this is the way I’ll always remember you

Sitting there at the kitchen table, coffee in hand

Taking  a moment to sit with me

Telling stories from your childhood, about life on the homestead

Your wrinkled hands holding postcards and pictures

Or your fingers clacking away on the keyboard in the den

And how you always invited me in

To your kitchen of  that patchwork palace in the prairie

Where you worked and wrote and welcomed

I remember Grandma Dorothy, red hair blowing in the wind