Blue

 I don't remember what I wore that day but 

I still see the way he plopped down on the bed

beside me just before he left to run an errand 

on his way to work- his weight, his hair and freckles,

how tall he'd grown in sixteen summers on the earth. 

He took the script I held and tested me to see if

I had learned my lines, such silly lines, a comedy

that opened within weeks. By then I'd come home, after the

applause and bows, the glass of champagne sipped, and sit 

inside the car all by myself to contemplate 

the ins and outs of joining him in heaven even though I knew 

it wasn't yet my time to go. It hurt ... so much ... that it was his.

Twenty years plus four have passed since then. Today the sky

is blue, the air both hot and heavy when it hits my thickened skin,

an accessory, don't you agree? that every grieving parent needs to own.

There was no script for this, no cues or blocking, and the others

in the cast were just as lost as I on where to stand or what to do. 

But. 

Even though the play has lasted twenty years plus four, today ... 

today the sky is blue.

(c) 2024, Ellen Gillette

Adam Gillette was in an accident during the early hours of August 20, 2000 and hospitalized for two days. Declared dead on August 22, Adam was an organ donor, saving the lives of five people and giving sight to two others.

Thoughts on a Plane

Sitting on this chilly plane I pray the babies will stop crying

and I wish I had the energy to make up stories for the strangers all around.

A June flight got changed to
include a SEVEN hour layover
in Las Vegas. Ugh.

They chuckle at the videos they’re watching on their phones

or talk or doze. The engine drones,

my eyelids shut but not before a sudden thought astounds.

Is someone watching me instead

and making up a story that explains why I have left the ground?

Would I be the star, the heroine, the damsel in distress?

Whatever their imaginations be, I’ll bet they’d never guess

that I am sitting here wrapped up inside

the clothing of the dead,

which sounds a bit dramatic but is true.

Leaving Vegas, I am wrapped in Mama’s sweater

warm inside the heaviness that hung on cancer-ravaged

bony arms there at the end.

We’d never seen her thin although she said she was, in school.

The sweater isn’t stylish,

not my color, doesn’t match with what I am wearing but I thrill

to think that Mama,

like she did when I was young and sitting on her lap, still

wraps her arms around me now and then.

When my husband’s sister died,

the clothes she’d bought to keep up with whatever size

she was that month hung, waiting, in the closet

until Mom said take whatever. I’ll just give away the rest.

Her jeans caress me now,

a pair I never saw her wear or don’t remember

but they’re soft and stretch enough to cover my vacation sins.

In life, though family, we were never best of friends

but in her jeans now

I am grateful for the grace that taught us to at least pretend.

Leaving Vegas and the desert far behind

no money lost, no money won,

and if again I travel there it will be much too soon

which sounds a bit dramatic but is true.

(c) Ellen Gillette, 2023

Note: Riding on the airplane I jotted down a few notes, that turned eventually into a poem for my writing group, then changed a little more as I read it to them.

Enough

I wouldn't say the month passed quickly.   

.

I only know that when I take a breath 

it's not the ICU I smell. (That took a while.)

We said goodbye and touched the blanket

one more time and that was that.

They called Code Hero for a donor

while inwardly we wished that he would save 

not all those others, but ... well ... us. 

The hugs made damp by falling tears.

The drugs we used to try and medicate

away the pain or catch up on our sleep.

Fragrant flowers that could not outlast our grief.

The phone calls and texts that must be made

while knowing that each bit of information 

would elicit sobs. Unanswered questions 

rise within my throat that taste of bile and dust. 

 "How are you?" people ask, although this time

I'm not the one who suffers most. But still.

The phrase I use is that I feel a little wobbly. 

What I leave unsaid is that I'm standing 

on a precipice and I know that I could sit.

I know I could avoid the wind that's picking up,

that threatens, that could blow me up to heaven,

down to hell or somewhere in between

but something in me plants my feet, defiant.

I raise a fist and yell "Enough!" as if my voice

could even carry in a storm like this. But suddenly,

sensing my resolve, the wind moves on.

The air is sweet and full of peace and that

will have to do until the next time 

Death, once more, comes near.

(c) Ellen Gillette, 2023

              

Hospital Bed

Adam Rogers Gillette
b. May 22, 1984
d. August 22, 2000

He filled the bed.

Still just a boy, but already

hinting at the man he'd be

if he had not, instead

watched us crying there

from somewhere overhead

and waved goodbye.

He filled the bed

as he filled his years with ball games

of all kinds and cartwheels,

kindness, laughter, loyalty

to family, team and God,

who gifted him without revealing

it was only for awhile.

He filled the bed.

He filled his time on earth,

learning more and packing more into

his sixteen times around the sun 

than if he'd lived far longer.

He filled our hearts.

He always will.

(c) Ellen Gillette, 2022

Siblings Day

It's Siblings Day and Becky, older by three years,

George Swain Pendergraft
b. 2/10/1960
d. 2/25/1960

is seven hundred miles away, a little less perhaps. 

And George, the baby of we three, who would be sixty-one 

but never got to blow out candles on his birthday, 

not a single one, is even farther, walking streets of gold. 

We would have spoiled him, more than likely, 

but a baby brother might have tempered

my own tendencies to take out teeth from Becky's doll

or play the nurse, giving shots to Barbies with the ball-topped

pins from Mama's sewing box. If babies grow in  heaven,

if the elderly grow young, I picture him at twenty,

tall and strong, his red hair glowing in the city 

with no need of any sun, walking with our mother,

father, and the almost-twin who is my son.

(c)Ellen Gillette

July 1st

It feels like June was never here,

as if the record of my life was scratched;

the needle jumped and now it is July.

June bled out slowly, in reality. My mind

goes back and plays the record at

another speed to slow it down, revisit

every moment of the early part with projects

filling time and then the phone call on the 10th

that stopped the clock, the calendar,

the calm that settled in for days and weeks,

that lulled me into thinking I was fine.

Decisions, deadlines, Daddy's death

and boxes of the memories he left behind,

photographs of people with no names,

of buildings without people, trees, flowers

more than anything as if their momentary

blooms had been a lesson that we didn't

even recognize the need to learn.

Smiling children who grew up with him

would sit and weep on padded pews and later, 

shovel dirt inside the hole beside my son. 

But that was then and now it is July, too soon

and yet, in many ways, not soon enough.

(c) Ellen Gillette, 2019

On What Might Be

Adam Rogers Gillette --
 born May 22, 1984
died August 22, 2000 --
ever loved and missed.

I might be working on the menu,
calling him to ask what his request was
for a birthday feast, his 35th, a special celebration,
and all day I'd think of how it was
that afternoon I fell in love, the comments
I remember made by friends and family
who joined us for the moment
he would make his entrance.
"If the baby's just another girl," his brother
said, "I'll give her to the neighbor."
Their sisters played outside and
I could hear them through the open window
in our bedroom as the pains got harder,
faster, little time to rest between them, but I tried.
Thirty-five years later I'd be making sure
his brother wasn't working or that his sister out
in Texas could call on Face Time at a certain time to
join the "Happy Birthday" singing with the rest of us.
His other sister, I might ask to make the cake,
or help me get the house as sparkling clean as
you'd expect when welcoming someone you love.
At 35, perhaps he'd have a wife and children,
little freckled versions of that handsome face
and auburn hair. Perhaps he'd bring a story of his day
at work, or something new on the horizon, but
the conversation wouldn't really matter as we basked
together in the glow of laughter, of shared memories,
and knowing nothing of the heartache that we have instead.
This birthday and the eighteen other ones we've spent
without him have in common so much joy
there are no words to accurately describe it,
and as well, the sense of such deep loss that if it
was a painting, it would be in shades of grey and black
and if it was a poem, it might be something just like this.

On the Eve of Mama's Birthday

I thought it was another of the multitude of things:
the particles of drama, quarks of quirks that make this
place a challenge I can tolerate with promised grace
but without much left over by the end of day. As tempting
as it is to smooth the wrinkles of my words and make it sound
as if my present state of mind is overblown, I am
too honest, I'm afraid. And yet tonight I realize
that nothing of the normal nastiness may be to blame
at all. Perhaps it is, instead, the fact that in the morning,
I will wake up to the first of Mama's birthdays in my life
that will not have her voice, her breath, her joy.

I hadn't really planned on that.

The rest is ordinary stress I recognize as Life, at least
for now. Although I often do not know my place or what
my role should be at any given minute, I adjust
(and fairly quickly, since I get such frequent practice).

But how do I adjust to nothing

when the something, when the someone,

was so dear?


(c) Ellen Gillette, 2018

Meltdown 2018

I didn't have the meltdown as I stood there at his grave,

my shadow falling on the marker with his name

much like my shadow must have fallen

through an open doorway countless nights

when some slight noise alerted me to check the crib,

or later, just to see the childrens' shapes in bed and know

that they were safe. 

The tears did not appear beneath the wind chime 

that I couldn't reach to (hopefully) repair at home.

The tubes were guarded by a frog, some wasps, and as I

batted them away, a groundsman came to see what was

the matter. We worked together, Juan and I, and

got it down for me to take, but I could tell that he was

clearly moved that he could help a mother

at her baby's grave, and on this special day as well.

We both agreed that I would see him once again,

but longing for that far-off day (or not) did not precede

the so-familiar ache that warns my surface will be breached,

the pain about to make its way 

into the light.

At Daddy's place, I listened as they answered crossword questions,

knowing I could tell him what today was, knowing if I did that

likely in a minute, he would slip back into the  fog

where he resides, where loved ones aren't in sight

but close, and coming back, perhaps, at any time.

But as I left him, walking to the car and driving off,

a woman called who needed me to scan some documents.

My signature last week went through in portrait and she

needed landscape for the files and with so many clients 

in her care she really can't be bothered. Would I email right away 

so they can process the insurance?

That's when I lost it. 

I could hold it all together, seamlessly transitioning

from task to task, from exercise to kitchen and from getting

dressed to errands, all without a sense of stress,  until 

she called and one more thing was asked of me.

Poor lady. I could tell that she felt terrible.

But not, I think, as terrible as me. 

You see, that's what a meltdown does. 

You know they'll come, they just don't come on cue. You 

might be talking to someone about a birthday, say the words sixteen 

or son or accident or stand in line for deli meat, or see 

that one of his old friends is getting married 

and you're happy, really happy,

but you're also not. 

For just a minute, meltdowns let you wallow in the loss, 

reminding you that grief is never done, that it's

a process, and a fire that may cool down at times to

ashes and to embers, but also where the breath of God 

may blow it into flames at any time.

Reminding you that it's okay.

Make no apology for feeling.

What you feel is really not the loss at all:

It's love.

(c) Ellen Gillette, 2018

Unfortunately Sweet

The afternoon is warm and breezy.
Fallen leaves skip stiffly across the driveway
as I read a little Billy Collins on the bench
we put together weeks ago, the boys and I.

A car alarm cries sadly in the distance
as if no one with a clicker has the energy
to turn it off, or maybe they're asleep
or glued to Channel 5 for updates down in Broward.

On Facebook everyone is angry,
posting memes, assigning blame,
frustrated by the stubborn shining of the sun
upon a day with so much sorrow.

Unanswered questions for the boy, for politicians,
for the culture we've allowed in which
the answer is in pulling out a gun, no longer able
to accept the fact that others are not hurting

like we hurt inside and so we try to change
the ratio, increase the pain around us so
it doesn't feel as though we bear more than our
share. We don't all pull a trigger, though.

Sometimes we use our words. Sometimes we use
our silence, or a finger pointed at The Ones
we want to blame. I doubt that any of it matters,
not today at least, to anyone who grieves a loss

for real, not just collective grief, that shroud we
put on when it happened, or because it happened
in our state, or in America. I mean the grief of
families at the morgue or picking up the backpacks

left behind, the car keys from the pockets, or the iPhones
with a final text still frozen on the screen, the
horror they endure today while we sit on our benches
reading poetry, or find some other way to deal

with the frustration that there must be Something Done,
some answers seeming obvious, some not so clear.
But far above, the sky persists in being blue;
the fragrance of the day remains unfortunately sweet.


(c) Ellen Gillette, 2018


On February 14, 2018, a young man walked onto the campus of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida and killed (as of today) 17 people, and stirring up within all of us deep emotion. Writing helps me deal with things.

Worn Thin

In 16 years, we fell in love
with all he had to offer:
temper, grin, abilities,
angel kisses sprinkled on his face.
Super Adam's hero stance,
his tenderness with Grandma Polly
and the little kids who showed
up at the door to see if he, a teen,
was home and willing.
The way he'd take on older guys
when he was just a little one himself
because he knew that they could teach him
how to be a better player,
one day... be a better man.

If only he had had the chance.

A second 16 years have passed, today.
The pillow that his sister cherished
lost his scent so long ago,
his soccer shirts now fit
the namesake nephew that
he never met.
The cut-offs I still wear
from time to time
have holes, the denim worn as thin
as all our understanding
of the reasoning behind it all.

We trust, but still
we miss
and grieve
and love.


(c) Ellen Gillette, 2016

Shadow

Etched upon cold granite
much deeper than the words and dates
her shadow shows an odd reality
but in reverse. It is the light
behind him which both burns and blinds 
and so he blocks it, shadows her 
from all-consuming pain
and warms, instead, her heart.


(c)Ellen Gillette, 2016

They Miss Us, Too

They miss us, too, the ones who've gone before us,

crossed the bar or bought the farm,

ascended into heaven, kicked the bucket, in repose,

asleep in Christ, to glory graduated, gone to be with God

and all his angels, all those scrubbed and sweeter, silly, 

really, ways of saying that they died. They're gone. 

Not lost, perhaps, though that's another thing we say 

until corrected by a child of three. "We know," she frowned, 

"that he's in heaven, so he can't be lost." And she was right.

It's I who's lost, still now and then, so hungry for his voice

or laugh, I want to shake my first at God, demanding

that he tell me why he took my son.

I ask and ask, but clouds have never parted, nor an angel tap

me on the shoulder, showing up at last with answers,

or excuses. Platitudes would never touch such perfect lips,

apologies (though wanted) not in keeping with the

sovereignty I cling to desperately, reminded that God's ways

are always, always best. They have to be. They must.

"I miss you so," I breathed today, surprised - though why,

I couldn't say - to hear so quickly in my heart "I miss you too."

It struck me. Miss me? In the midst of holiness,

in Paradise, eternal joy and health and bliss? "Not sadly,"

he explained,"because the joy leaves little room

for tears. More like the way you miss the green of spring 

when winter takes the leaves. It's natural, you know it has

to be, but still you miss it. Even knowing that the

green will come again, you miss the fact it hasn't come

quite yet." And that is how I know they miss us, too,

our voices and our laughter, miss the times

of fun on earth, because...for now...those memories 

are what they talk about, when worship takes a rest,

the other duties, play times, all the things that

perfect people might enjoy. Not being perfect,

I can only speculate, but this I know:

Their bodies died; we miss those bodies still.

Their love did not, nor did our own. And never will.

(c) Ellen Gillette, 2016