The final song at your funeral was, “How Can I Keep From Singing?” And I choked on my own tears and could not give those words flight to meet you. “You should sing at the top of your lungs at least once a day,” you advised your children, singing as you washed dishes, mowed the lawn, stood beside us in the pews on Sundays, as you tucked us in at night. I want you to know not a day went by that I didn’t sing out loud, usually in the shower, both loudly and badly. I sang parody lyrics to match events in the world around me, usually from cheesy 80s songs. When Covid struck, I could not sing for weeks. I felt too heavy to lift the words from my lungs, too fearful in uncertainties to belt out loud sound. This past week, I began to sing again, loudly and badly. I can hear your funeral song in my head, and I now have two answers to the question, “How Can I Keep From Singing?”

[Prompt 4: Write an epistolary poem that is a letter from you to someone who has passed and/or someone you have not seen in a long time.]