For Sandy Dennis

1.
In an Omaha steakhouse full of indian summer dinner feasting families you modestly celebrated what you knew would be the closest thing to a goodbye glimpse of home by eating and drinking as if willing the red-robed walls to fall in on our table without a thought for the candle flame that would surely get sucked out as the particleboards and plywood left the door frames and windowsills behind and rushed to the floor with a last gasp of generation of paint and wallpaper glue swirling into your lungs.

2.
No movie can show your eyes as they looked after completing one last scene playing our mother, when you limped outside, worn out and uncomplaining, to squeeze onto the flimsy, rusted seat of a child's swingset for a photo opportunity. Your shaky hands gripped the chains and I felt your back tense with the strain of holding on to the unbearably ripe fruit of a half-stomach, but you allowed your swollen feet--at last freed of those horrible sandals--to trail back and forth in the cool September grass of the unmowed backyard.

3.
You're packed and ready to go early the next morning, sitting on the well-made bed in a fresh dress and humming slightly out of breath with the radio, done hours ago with fighting off dreams

4.
You've pulled apart the heavy hotel drapes to let in the sun, and exclaim that there isn't a cloud in all that blue as if you'd never seen such a sky.

5.
I carry your suitcase downstairs and we embrace in the circular driveway. I worry that I'm holding you too tight, and start to let go. Refusing to let me take you to the airport, you kiss me on the forehead and get in a taxi.