Dear Mrs. McGreevy (a draft)

Dear Mrs. McGreevy,

I am sorry I was a little scared of you when I knew you were alone, 
how afraid I was to kiss your cheek – you see, I could not bear 
the way that rude hair on your forgotten chin would puncture
the innocence of my own, and I was so very much I feared
that your mouth had resisted its own skin, taught against the gums, 
no teeth, lips practically vanishing inside themselves,
some kind of white froth about the edges. Your eyes were always wide 
and too much open, unnaturally, as if you were watching ghosts. 

Mrs. McGreevy, I am sorry I could not understand even when you tried 
to say hello, that I refused your offer of lemon hard candy because 
I had already had my fill from everyone else who had offered. Mrs. McGreevy,  
I do know that was so long ago, that you passed when I was still a child, 
but I so clearly remember the thick tendons of your neck, how thin 
you were, how your bones felt rigid when I hugged you, fingers spastic 
and grasping against my softer self, and how I thought everything about you 
was stronger than it should have been, because didn’t everyone say 
when you get old, the bones are the first things to go, that you fall so much 
more easily, and land yourself in an old folks’ home, tucked in,
where only charity and chance usher random visitors? 

Mrs. McGreevy, I want you to know that I know why only people 
of a certain age can possibly understand how you draw closer 
to mortality when you visit and hug an older person, how most of us cannot
even handle it, and we hardly know what to say, other than to ask
about the weather. I know why we avoid looking too closely 
at your thin and shining skin – because those faint lines might tell us 
you have seen too much, know too much, but it no longer comes from 

a tongue that speaks, and we rely on those who are able to tell us
that you had recently had a stroke, that your family no longer visits, 
that you used to work in an office no longer made for you. 
I know you could not live in the apartment you had rented 
for twenty some odd years, and you were put in a home 
by the closet and a public telephone because you liked to hear it ring. 
And Mrs. McGreevy, I understood even as far back as then, 
there’s a certain disdain for elders, as if everyone becomes a throwaway, 
something to be stored away, until we are ready to die. And I want to say 

I am sorry I was so horribly shy, that I did not know what words to utter,  
because my own thoughts had barely formed, and besides, I didn’t talk
much anyway, but I did make you this poem, for all that it’s worth.
I want you to know I still remember your name, that someone explained 
you were happy to see us, we the young ones, specters of your former self, 
how we reminded you of your own frail youth. And I want you to know
I do so very much understand, after living through so very, very much
myself, the kind of courage it requires for some of us to grow old. 

Katherine Mercurio Gotthardt, copyright March 5, 2024, all rights reserved