In A Quiet Room

The grievers

In the end I had to do it.

So quietly he left; he was old and yet

I would have kept him longer

To keep a little piece of you and me alive.

I left him with the vet

And wept all the way home in the car.

He returned a few weeks later in a very pretty jar.

The kind you get ginger in.

I thought; my Dad’s casket was wooden

with a nice brass name plate.

I remember the weight of it

and we had it in the shed for a year not knowing

quite what to do with it.

Anyway he spent a lot of time in his shed,

So it seemed sort of appropriate.

But how absurd- this floral thing!

My Mum came to me in a maroon plastic tub

with a nasty paper label

stuck on all crooked.

I remember I found it insulting somehow.

Now, she loved ginger!

At least on Millennium Day I found a place for her,

at Runnymead. Released her from the tin

to float away to London.

Guiltily removing her name

before throwing the plastic thing in the bin

on top of a dozen others just the same.

So, I have buried the ginger jar in a new wall

Where my son wrote a label should it ever be found.

“This was my cat Tuck. I loved him very much”

On this page are  three poems about death from the perspective of hind-sight. the grievers  which I’m reading for you is supposed to make you smile. I referred to my cat Tuck ( see drawing below) in The Grievers who died last year so I include a poem that began about him and moved on to something  else The song everyone seems to like is quietly comforting.