Distance Makes the Heart Grow Fonder (English / Welsh)

Spring has returned to the land
and so my thoughts to you
I remember you so clearly
time has not erased your images from my mind
they are not paler with passing years
if anything they are clearer now

Eleven springs have come and gone
since you travelled into the quantum
into the question mark
Eleven springs and I still dream of you
still remember your smile
your hair, your perfume

I can still feel the rough wool of that old brown sweater
your tiny boney frame as I embraced you
your look of confusion on the day I drove you to the hospital
your stalwart determination to return home
your acquiescence to god
your last anguished moments

But I remember not just those last moments
your laying in that antisceiptic room
away from 111 N. 9th Street
where you had lived for 70 years
your body convulsing in its death throes
your eyes staring out blindly with no soul left to guide them
your tongue bloodied because in a last fit of life you bit it

I remember the long hot summer afternoons
the rain falling on the flagstone walk
I remember the Waldorf Red Velvet cakes
and the sound of your heels clanking on the cellar steps
I remember the canaries' songs and the smell of your apron
when I was a little boy

I remember the long walks through town
Our little town, our little world
I remember trips for toys to Teddy Bear
and to Lee's for ice cream
I remember the feel of your old red winter coat
and the glint of your silver horn-rimmed glasses

I remember your fit of anguish after Marggie died
I remember your plaintive cries at the side of Sue's coffin
I remember the lone country road that March with mother
The snow melting and the sky heavy and yellow
I remember your voice, a magnetic artifact from weeks before
Playing on the answering machine just hours after you died

"Barbara, where are you?" you called out forlornly to my mother
From the machine, from the past, from the quantum
Was that god's way of telling us time is immaterial?
I remember the peach rose bush that grew alongside Ott Thomas' garage
the peach rose your cold hands clasped in the casket
the flowers we planted on the graves in Stroudsburg cemetery

And all these remembrances play in my mind
Eleven springs on and I remember it all
Seeing your demise did not weaken my memory of you
rather its sad portent has reinforced the lovely rose moments we had
Eleven springs on and I confess
In absence I may love you more now than when you were alive

Er cof Arwilda Elizabeth Hagerty, 1908-1994