Dec 14, 1926 – Nov 05, 2022
Margaret S. Grande
A Poem for Mom (Margaret S. Grande – nee Pagan)
Always remembering
The cyclotron in Colombo
Motorcyclist with goggles
Circling and rising
In a cylinder of wood
Til the sheer momentum
Kept him horizontal
You had a momentum
All your own
Linked to nature
And Roller skating in Nuwara Eliya
Near the old hotel
You reading Eloise in Moscow
In this special time
So brief the time we shared
That each of us shares with others
And always your wood clogs
Crushing cans in Oslo and gardening
The sheer wit
Of the distance you kept and
Canny ways of seeing
Through it all
And that photo of you
Young and long haired
In winter in Montreal
Toque and scarf
Out there in the white winter cold
but smiling nonetheless
Ways of being
I walk the mountain
Mount Royal
remembering how you
Split the tram ticket
So your friend could travel downtown
Or how Oscar Peterson
Would walk ahead of you in
the snow after school
wearing his tight mustard yellow jacket
Or play piano tunes at lunch time
at Montreal High
Your uncle who had
An industrial accident
Steel beam hit his head
And could never work again
No workers’ compensation back then
he learned to sing instead
Or your dad Bob Pagan
Carving rubber in the depression
To make a washer
For the plumbing
Locked out
in the shed
Backyard in Montreal’s east end
You made your own world
Apart
from whatever home was
You caught Marlon Brando in
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
In New York
when they rolled out the
Streets on Long Island’s latest
suburbs where you lived then
Or Charlottenburg in Berlin
All Biedermeier and dark wood panelling
When Dad offered you
Opera glasses
And you refused
Cause you needed
Dishes instead
Or Kolonaki Square in Athens
at a time when you danced with
Rene Levesque that flirt
General Patton’s assistant
And gave Canadian wool sweaters to the
Refugees in Albania
It was so hard
Wasn’t it?
To realize a life
When your life
had few choices
A conscript of diplomacy
Your children farmed out
To different countries
put away
So to Speak
Managing the
cocktail parties and dinners
With hardly a moment
to be with yourself
Rocks and earth
Scrape the bottom
of the old VW
In spring
On the way to the family
cottage at Lac Bonin near
St Pierre de Wakefield
in the Gatineau
You made good at the Red Cross
As their long term co-ordinator
And that’s
The way we remember
All those things… even now
Time’s a great
Distillery
With love fragments
In the big mix
A little bit of everything
John K Grande
2022
Nos plus sincères sympathies à la famille et aux amis de Margaret S Grande..
Décès pour la Ville:Ottawa, Province: Ontario