The Bouquet and the One Who'll Be Next

by George David Clark

 

Crippled since childhood by polio, unable to swim,
Grandfather drowned in a boating accident
shortly after his eighty-fifth birthday, making three times

in a row the bouquet came true.
At the visitation a beautifully wrinkled man
accosted me while my grandmother and my mother

made their way around the room inspecting the names
on the arrangements and collecting a flower or two
from each of them. The wrinkled man smiled elaborately,

began speaking, then paused to smile again.
He wanted to know if I remembered him, who in '91
had taught my fourth grade Sunday School class

at the First Methodist Church. As he spoke, I watched
several of the younger women gather about my grandmother at the guestbook podium where they helped her bind

the flowers into a bouquet with a length of ribbon
the funeral home had generously provided.
It was then that the more lucid among the elderly

made their attempts to leave, rising rather quickly
from the embroidered sofas along the wall.
They excused themselves from conversation

with questions concerning the location of the bathrooms
or complaints that the room was getting stuffy,
but at the door the men who would be pallbearers

in the morning were waiting to usher them back.
My uncle raised his voice, announcing it was time
for the bouquet and everyone over eighty-five

should gather on the oriental rug beneath the cieling fans.
I found the old Sunday School teacher still stalled
at my elbow, speaking sincerely into my lapel.

When he realized he'd regained my attention
he smiled once more and took my forearm in his hands.
I led him over to the rug and deposited him

by a garrulous balding woman who greeted him with a kiss
on his forehead. While we waited for a woman bent
behind an aluminum walker to come ever-so-slowly

across the parquet floor, the recently eighty-five found
the back or the fringes the way they always do,
except for Grandfather who, first time in the circle,

planted himself brazenly in the very front. I recall
his defiant face when that greif-wrought widow loosed
the bouquet. He could have avoided it,

even on only one leg and a quarter, but he didn't.
He reached out and caught the damn thing
in his hands. Did I realize then I'd never really known him,

had never spoken with him about anything
other than myself? In that he was almost like God.
At his coffin, Grandmother turned her back

on the room and retrieved the bouquet from where
someone had placed it on his chest. Without warning
she arced the flowers over her head,

and even as her arm rose the elderly scattered,
the beautifully wrinkled man left alone and looking
in the wrong direction when it struck his knee.

© 2006 George David Clark