No Lilies for Sophie

Her bed – chock-a-block, from top
to toe, with pamphlets. Should it be
a woven willow casket, or then again,
a biodegradable one? A ‘woodland burial’,
in that forest at Olney.

Then, there was a voice in her head...
the one said a cremation might be best;
her ashes scattered to the tide off the pier
in Southwold, where she’d often go to think –
try and make sense of things – this
child of the earth, and of mine.

Many decisions to be made...weighed
heavy on her mind; organised, to a fault,
as, habitually, she was, and, would I ensure,
absolutely everyone wore ‘jazzy clothes’;
no black allowed, she stressed, with that
off-kilter smile of hers...

‘Even the chaplain,’ she quipped, with
a glint in those ever-effervescent,
blue-gray eyes, who’d vowed to wear
his ‘Sunday-best’, otherwise known as
the holy, Easter robes.

And what of that all important music?
‘All Creatures Great and Small’ –
Debussy’s ‘Clair de Lune’, she decided,
having played both on piano since a child.

Not on any account, was it to be called
a ‘funeral’...instead, ‘A Celebration of Life’,
with masses of flowers, but no lilies;
their smell, pungent...like bad breath,
she’d considered.

‘Celebrate the life I had, don’t
mourn the life I had not,’ she said.
Easier said than done, except

she didn’t resent one single second –
said cancer shaped the person she’d become.
I wanted to say that this was tearing me apart...
ask how she could be so calm.

Wanted to shout it to the heavens
that enough was enough! Ask Him, a year
from now, could He, somehow, conjure
her up, as then...gazing out the window
at trees, shrubs and flowers she loved;
so pale – so vibrant...so young.

Tomorrow was all she’d ever asked for,
and the chance of maybe seeing Spring
just one last time. Winter Jasmine
was in bloom...its petals, fair singing,
from deep within that darkling scrim.