Dad is gone
after years of being the guy
who bought all the drinks at the bar
after years of sabotaged holidays
he finally discovered humanity
just in time to hustle his way
into heaven
leaving his spouse with
two elderly parents requiring more
time and energy than she could muster.
Her brother took grandma & grandpa
to an Ozark lake carved from the
bleached-bone white
Bonne Terre limestone
and Mom escaped to the care
of her offspring in a trailer park
near Galveston Bay.

Raising six kids trapped this daughter of
hill folk & Revolutionary War heroes
in a box malformed to her curiosity.
She escaped the box through
crossword and logic puzzles
(" if Sally has three cents and
Johnny is missing a tooth
how old is Jane?" somehow she
always knew the answer)
and she played the meanest game of
gin rummy you could imagine.
Her hyperactive mind
compelled her to wander the house
conducting audible conversations
with parties not present
or to read books presenting
plausible scenarios
for the end of civilization
as we know it.

Her phone messages
documented her
formidable doomsday readings:
cometary impacts
melting ice caps
conspiracies by the Trilateral Alliance,
her cravings for stimulation expressed
through vicarious carnival rides of
catastrophic proportions.

Life on a Texan coastal plain
did little to soften her convictions
that danger abounded
in every tropical depression
forming off the coast of Senegal -
she tracked them all across the Atlantic
on a map in her office,
then left messages
reporting on the progress of
the latest hurricane
bearing her name and address.
But still it was my mother's voice and it
comforted me as if she were rocking me
in a cradle.

Then one day her voice
resonated feebly from the phone
"I'm going into the hospital
everything will be alright
but call me" and instinctively
I deleted the message without knowing
this would be the last one.

She wanted to be someplace beautiful
so Megan and I took her up a
Wyoming mountain pass
to disperse her into the ages
from atop a lofty crystalline waterfall.

I asked Megan what was on her mind
at that particular moment.
"The Big Lebowski," she replied,
outwardly embarrassed by
the irreverent thought of dodging
her grandmother's windblown ashes
at this solemn ritual but the thought
had occurred to me as well.