Reunion

Sky and Sea

Reunion

I sit in my cousin’s den beside Evelyn, my parents’ caregiver.

I am the happiest I have been in a long time, 

surrounded by the team that guided my parents’ boat

down river and into the ocean.

With me are  the cousins that pitched in when my brother did not. 

Mostly from my dad’s side of the family, they are his sisters’ boys,

all of them older than me, 

all of them knowing my parents longer than I did.

Only one important son from my mother’s side is absent.

the son of her youngest sibling,

the brother she had rocked in her arms when he was an infant 

and who passed before she did,
unleashing the tsunami of tears for everyone she missed. 

There is poetry where families pull together when death comes to separate them, 

some kind of song that needs to be written.  

That is what this is, and I am bridging now before I offer the last verse.

Evelyn and  her husband Sam are the heroes.

My parents are the sky and sea.  

The rest of us play bit parts in the ballad and 

I write it because it has its own path,

this poem of love lavished, 

born at the end of my parents’ lives.

Julia Cline

July 13, 2021