Nothing reveals the body as vessel quite like death
When shallow breaths evaporate
and that twinkle shoots across the sky of your eyes
And disappears into the darkness of your infinity

I can still see your silhouette dancing on the veranda with grandpa
Or maybe you’re chasing children
Or tip-toeing along Pacific crests with your sisters
Or maybe you’re still here floating in the corners like Kenwood herbs
Smiling down as we gather and storytell
Laugh for levity
Drink to toast

Go gracefully old Kate
You are an ancestor now

Your spirit still feels of Happy Hour at Feather River
But your fingers are cooling now
like twisted branches washed upon the Dillon shore
Sculptor hands
Brick. oak. dough. flesh.

You crafted amazing works of art you called children
Named them with sounds
Blessed them with stories
Showed them ropes and hard work and love

Hoisted grand babies into your arms and laughed
Your art. Your kin. Rekindled and remade
And we will beget more in your memory.

Us grandkids have only witnessed your final chapters
We but footnotes in your story
Moons of distant planets
All of us orbiting you
(Seems somehow fitting that the moon is full tonight as you move toward Neptune)

But we are your crescendo too
Your banner men and torch bearers
Your legacy incarnate

Surrounding your bed
Holding your hand firm and your spirit aloft
Carrying you forward

All will know the gospel of your life through our love, our work, and our joy
They will know your stories and know your greatness through ours
Because no man or woman stands alone
Nobody is self-made outright
We are built brick by brick
Tempered, mixed and molded
Baked in the sun and laid to cool as you are now
Mortared by lessons and laid with purpose

You there with the mason hands
You made us possible

Thank you for everything, grandma
For always making your table longer and stretching food further
For being both generous matriarch and coupon queen
And for understanding that the latter enabled the former

Thank you for being both maker and caretaker
Cashier and culture keeper
Thank you for vodka tonics and gin rummy schoolings
For baseball cheering and rascal scoldings

For being the sacred to my profane
And the ember to our flames

We strive to live on with your zen
And to love as you did
With bounty and grace.

Amen.