Saints Among Us

Merle Hazard's touching poems about her husband carry us into All Saints Day. I draw comfort from quietly remembering the saints in my life. Not paragons of perfection, but persons of true goodness, who have been there for me and with me. I draw comfort from the lasting nature of that goodness, from remembering it and also continuing to feel it near in ways I can't explain. 

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Three Poems

 

by Merle Hazard

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ALL SAINTS’ DAY SUNDAY

                               November 6, 2005

We confessed our sins,

we asked for forgiveness,

and then the bell tolled,

echoed through the silence.

The pastor read the names

of loved ones who died

since last All Saints’ Day.

Yours was read as Sherrill

Hazard, your baptismal name.

Last November, on the 5^th

we sat together in the doctor’s

office after hours listening,

not hearing the death sentence,

inoperable lung cancer, too

advanced for radiation.

Icy numbness gripped

me then, I knew the stats.

After we called our boys

we just looked at each other

never having been here before.

We hugged, I cried and cried,

and I can smell still today,

the sweet scent of Hugo Boss

that permeated your embrace.

Then we did what

we always did when

no supper was ready.

We drove straight to

Perkins, ate, and

talked about everything

but what lay ahead.

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EARLY AUTUMN

I see the plants and trees

slowly transforming themselves,

anticipating winter

and I recall last autumn.

Just last year you could

not breathe to lift the flower pots,

store them for the winter,

nor stack the wood for our fires

or wash our windows

to ready our home

for what was to come.

I knew, I knew before your final

tests were even done that it would be our last

autumn, even as you chatted about

next fall we will need to remember to do

this an easier way.

It is next fall, the gardens slip away.

I try to ready our house,

remembering things I saw you do.

Today I brought up the fall decorations

you had stored last year in the basement.

I found them so neatly placed,

so carefully labeled, as though

you were still here.

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GARDEN HAT

Simotion, iStockPhoto

I washed your garden hat this week;

the silly, floppy brimmed

canvas topper you wore

to shade your chrome dome.

I found your lid on the gas grill

where you tossed it

that last Saturday.

I wore that hat all summer.

I suppose I thought

it might impart your green thumb

as I struggled with the weeds,

the acrid smelling spray,

hoping the poison was not killing

one of your prize plants.

I wore it when I mowed the lawn

and fought the prickly thistles,

when I picked the dead geranium heads.

It was grimy with a mix

of your sweat and mine.  I soaked the it

as you once did, in bleach and hot water,

sudsed it, rinsed and blocked it dry.

I packed up some of your clothes 

for Goodwill.  I put the garden hat

in the bag, but it refused to go.  

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Poems copyright Merle Hazard, all rights reserved.

Merle and her husband Sherrill were living in Appleton, Wisconsin, when he died. Merle’s nursing career includes specialties in home health care and hospice. After living in Appleton for some 19 years, a place where she says she "found her voice," Merle now lives in Macon, Georgia, near one of her sons and his family.  Mother of two and grandmother of five, Merle likes to walk, play bridge and rummikub, write, read, and spend time with family and friends.