More have entered the Halls of Valhalla, says Doctor Doolittle with a HARRUMPH

 

More have entered the Halls of Valhalla

We learn through family members or monkeys clapping  from tall branches

We brew a cuppa Joe to get us situated and then the Roll Call begins anew

Terrible when my father was the first to go

Who dad? With the strength of a Serengeti tiger? He'd bring a thermos with hot water

to The Shop every day and curled up like a fetus at the moment of death

59 remember that number

He would like the fragrant honeysuckle twining round my bushes

When my first mania arrived and I looked in the mirror

Why did I see him? Dad, the man who called me Ruthie and told me

to stop whistling, it was annoying.

Every day I thank Helene for her gifts of forks and bowls and bigger bowls

The coffee she'd make when I'd visit, the Davey Ire Pancakes that baked in the oven

That gorgeous marbelized orange pitcher I keep on the living room credenza

and I have been halfway round the world, harrumph, but gone are Simon, Cardinale,

Weinstein, the coffee's too cold now, like the once living bodies

The oldest of two sisters just passed

Iris Goodman, age 78. She'd had two heart attacks. 

And don't tell me of the Peaceable Kingdom, it remains still as a sheet of glass

and have I mentioned Mom, Mommy, Marmee in Little Women

winsome woman, beloved by all, from childhood poverty she used her Yiddish

set a nice table at the Holidays and visited Aunt Tay the day after the Towers

toppled. She wasn't much for coffee, maybe powdered Nescafe, but fell asleep anyway

even if I lay in bed with her, searching for the remote.

Today is Sunday. If I could, I would bring her some Dunkin and a cardboard box

of doughnuts and would explain the meaning of 'film noir.'

It's all film noir, don't you think? She would always set a special place

for Simon and ask me to tell Helene: Stay on Bauman Drive and don't ever ever

move into a nursing home.