by Benjamin Matthews

Created on: June 30, 2010

Linda's Waltz: A Song for my Grandmother
January 2, 1945-April 30, 2010

Two decades we sat in the shade of this tree;
It had gotten comfy - finally - you and me.
Old times didn't define us; our past was behind us.
I'd grown to love you, as you'd grown to love me.

Twenty-one years have come and have gone,
Still I wasn't prepared for that gray afternoon;
Now twenty-one rings in the heart of that wood,

They implore me to say that our tree fell too soon.

Now I'm singing, Grammy Linda,
Mammy, you loved when I sang, so I'm singing for you.
Oh the life that you lived! but what I wouldn't give!
Oh my Grammy, my Mammy, my Linda...I love you.

I return to our forest and find that it's changed,
Find that all that remains is a hole in our sky.
It isn't so pleasant, this absence so present;
Oh why, oh my Grammy, did you have to die?

But may the Sun shine through the hole that you left
To the hole in my heart that has left me confused.
May that Son remind me: because he's alive
Death itself has died; Death itself did lose.

So now rest up, Grammy Linda,
Mammy, you'll need all the strength you can get
'Cause with funeral bells knelling, this thought's still compelling:
That Jesus ain't done; he's not done with you yet,

For this ancient cosmos, though fallen, is not lost;
Creation is poised for rebirth.
When Death is rejected, we'll be resurrected;
We will see the dawn of God's New Heavens, New Earth!

So I'm singing, Grammy Linda,
Mammy, the hope that we have-well, it catches my breath!
Though now you are gone, I have got to press on,
And I'll see you in life after "life after death."

And then, in that place, in new time and new space,
We will meet face to face - once again - (by God's grace).
We'll plant a new tree, and through eternity
You will be there with me. You will be there, Beauty,*

And I'll be singing, Grammy Linda.
Mammy, you loved when I sang, but it will be better yet
'Cause with bodies renewed and with voices restored,
We will sing to our Lord, but it will be...a duet.

-
*Linda means beautiful

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