Ode to My Mother Who Just Missed the Flowers of Mothers Day

Virginia Graham Crumb, 1945 

For Mom

Virginia Graham Crumb

8/20/24-5/9/18

A lot of life—

93-plus years—

A great lot of life—

Born on an August day in 1924

In Ithaca, lakeside city you loved

And returned to

For high school (Class of ’42)

And delivery of 4 kids

Doctor appointments

Dentist appointments

Christmas shopping

Departure on trains

To places where Jack

Was stationed in the Navy—

Memphis, Tennessee

Chincoteague, Virginia

Charlestown, Rhode Island—

Raising a rambunctious baby

In cramped quarters—

I was that wild thing

Running amok

Amid sailors and teen brides—

And then raising two kids

In a rented house

On an isolated farm road—

And then three kids

In the new house

That Jack built

In Jacksonville—

And then four kids

In a bigger house

In Interlaken—

Where you planted roots

For sixty-five years—

Playing piano at the church,

Singing with the Hot Flashes,

Lunching with friends

And crossing kids at school,

Bookkeeping for Jack’s businesses

And for the church—

Hosting an open house

For constant streams of neighbors,

Friends, travel-weary relatives

And strangers—

Who knew the last stop

Would be a hospital in Rome, NY

With a broken hip,

Pneumonia and baffled confusion,

Where you told a nurse

You were home in Interlaken

--Jan Barry