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”

In A Quiet Room is  a song I wrote  a long time ago now. It’s  about those times when you wish someone was still with you to share a special moment and then,because you are thinking of them it feels as if they really are with you.

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.