Tag: Obituaries

Obit 7 (for the Robin’s egg)

Posted on by Shelly Strebel in For Real Though, Obits

Obit 7 (for the Robin’s egg)

I was mowing the lawn and trying to do it like the golf courses, like I liked. 

I stopped short right by the base of the pear tree because I didn’t want to run over the anomaly. I had fixed the mower enough times to not make this mistake again. 

I released the gas, the motor purred to quiet, and I approached the bright blue ball. It wasn’t a toy; it was a robin’s egg. 

I had never seen one before but I knew what it was when I saw it. There’s no mistaking that most perfectly unbelievable turquoise.

I looked up at the barren pear tree, not yet flowering, a spectacular bony structure against the white winter sky. I saw the nest, visible and vulnerable. 

I got the tall ladder and a pair of sterile gloves from a first aid kit, knowing that the egg would be useless if there was a whiff of humanity on it. 

I placed the egg back in the nest with a sinewy, tall, hopeful reach. 

When I got back down the ladder, I reflected on how much care I’d taken in something no one else would ever see. 

And I knew my 15 year relationship was over. 

I went out the next morning, dragging out the tall ladder again to check on the egg in its nest.

And what can I say?

There were just too many crows in that neighborhood. 

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Obit 6 (for the obits)

Posted on by Shelly Strebel in For Real Though, Obits

Obit 6 (for the obits, as they were)

With these obits, I never meant to trick you into poetry.

If anything, that two-time poet laureate of ours Billy Collins tricked you first when he wrote that book called, “The Trouble With Poetry.”

I know that you know that there’s a lack of poetry in our lives. This is as obvious and honest as unfinished wood is prone to splinter.

Without poetry, Nabokov wouldn’t have painted in pointillism the beautiful nuance of disappointment in humanity. Without poetry, Lydia Davis wouldn’t have captured the horror and disgust of a lingering dog fart. Without poetry, we’re just a sequence of mad, missing moments.

But still, I don’t want to trick you into it. I was just trying to impress you. I didn’t mean the poetry to be pretense.

So join us today in celebrating the death of the poetic obit, where the first-person ordinarily yields to the third-person. Today we celebrate the first-person taking charge, despite its always having been the far less trustworthy narrator.

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