The Ghost of a Grandmother As A Young Woman (poem)

[Michael Corleone]

THE GHOST OF A GRANDMOTHER AS A YOUNG WOMAN

It doesn’t matter that her parents remember her as
their baby, then their child, that her high
school friends remember her as a fellow teenager,
that her husband remembers her as his wife, that
her children remember her as their mother.

She has been many things. Yet, at the moment
when she passed each stage of life, she became
a memory. Once she stopped being a child she
became the memory of one, no matter that she
was an adolescent.

She occupied two states at once. A state of being,
the here and now, the living self. The other the
memory of her previous age, the dreaming self.
When she was seconds away from her
death, she had been born seconds ago.

Everyone who met her is followed by thoughts
of what she did whilst they were together. Haunted
by the presence of things that have passed.
What is the difference between the non-physical
world of memory and the non-physical world of death?

A new generation begins. She is a grandmother to
them. To everyone else she is a memory. She passes
to the next level. This is the last part of her time on
earth, not of her time in our minds. She will always
be the ghost of a grandmother as a young woman.