Monday's Poetry: A Farewell

by Rocky Macy

I lost a good friend over the weekend.  Mertie, who was 93-years-old when she passed, led a full life and managed to live independently until suffering a stroke about four years ago that left her in need of full-time care in a residential setting.  That was a hard adjustment, but friends and family stayed close providing love and companionship.

Mertie and I met when my family moved to Noel, Missouri, in 1958.  Her daughter was one of my fifth-grade classmates.  Over the years our lives crossed paths many times.  She knew all of my children from the time they were born, and each considered Mertie to be sort of an auxiliary grandmother.   The last time we met face-to-face was a year ago this month when I joined her for lunch at her care facility in northwest Arkansas.

And then the awful pandemic hit and the nursing homes hunkered down and stopped in-person visits in order to protect their residents, and thousands of America's elderly were cut off from the outside world as even relatives were unable to have face-to-face contact with their loved ones.  I sent Mertie cards during the year in isolation and the staff included me on a zoom birthday call for her in July - and though Mertie had lost the ability to speak, she still managed to express displeasure at my long pandemic hair and unruly beard - but she did it in a good-humored manner!

The enforced isolation was just starting to come to an end when my friend passed away.   She had received her COVID inoculations, but fell ill to another malady which ultimately defeated her.  Mertie had a good life, I know that, but it is such a shame that she and so many others were denied personal contact with family and friends at the end of their lives - a situation that many did not even understand.

There were so many "farewells" that went unsaid.

Farewell, and rest well, Mertie.  Your labors here are done.

Here is a farewell for the ages from former British Poet Laureate Alfred Lord Tennyson:

A Farewell

by Alfred Lord Tennyson

Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea, 
Thy tribute wave deliver: 
No more by thee my steps shall be, 
For ever and for ever. 

Flow, softly flow, by lawn and lea, 
A rivulet then a river: 
Nowhere by thee my steps shall be 
For ever and for ever. 

But here will sigh thine alder tree 
And here thine aspen shiver; 
And here by thee will hum the bee, 
For ever and for ever. 

A thousand suns will stream on thee, 
A thousand moons will quiver; 
But not by thee my steps shall be, 
For ever and for ever.