Bitter. Sweet.

Grandma Jerry, when I forget how much I miss you, when I think of you instead of me, I daydream about your heaven and what might be there. There would be lots of yummy, no-longer-dangerous cigarettes, sweet and satisfying. And rose gardens, red red roses, pink, yellow, white and red red red. And Solitaire, Bridge games, Edna St. Vincent Millay, rhyming couplets, Shakespeare, big band swing, your long-lost-too-soon Mama, your here-too-briefly daughter Alice Elizabeth, and all those hundreds, easily hundreds of people who loved you but most importantly, who you loved and bid farewell over the years of your long, long life. Laughter is raucous. Cattiness elicits woops of hearty laughter, and the month is April, the breeze is soft, the sun dappled by light tree branches, those imagined poetic metaphorical erector-sets of your poems dissolved from stark nakedness into the lush lush breathing green of Spring. Today, you would be 104 years young. So there would be cake. Chocolate birthday cake--dark chocolate with a chocolate rasberry mousse center, chocolate frosting, and a map of fresh raspberries on top. The blackest, hottest coffee, even in the sun, cicadas singing, cardinals alighting on those branches, robins riding waves of sweet spring air. So. Spring is here. You are gone a year. You are no longer of time, of space, of dimension. Wish your shoulder, grown so tiny as you aged, were warm and waiting for my weary head. I miss your touch. I'm pretty good at voices, but yours won't pour from my lips. I wish I could hear your voice, my sweet sweet Grandma. It rolls through my mind but never hits the air outside. Relief? Spring is here. Spring made you weep with relief. You had the most beautiful hands, the fullest mouth. You loved so fiercely, so passionately, so plain. Spring has come, Spring came. And I, I guess, I can. I can weep again.