That spring morning in April, your granddaughter held the phone<\/p>\n
to your ear when I called, you on your deathbed, me standing<\/p>\n
alone at the back slider. I cried as your gravelly voice came over<\/p>\n
the wire, systems shutting down at age 98. I knew how badly<\/p>\n
you wanted to make it to 100. I wept so hard I couldn’t say what<\/p>\n
was in my heart. Then a hummingbird came to\u00a0the feeder hanging<\/p>\n
outside the window. It was the first visit in a long time. I watched<\/p>\n
the tiny bird sip nectar as you mumbled softly, words I could no longer<\/p>\n
understand. But I knew your heart, and that you were saying, “I love you,<\/p>\n
hon.” I wanted to ask you to say hello to my father, Virgil. But I knew you<\/p>\n
would anyway. I remembered a friend’s words, Never say goodby<\/em>e. <\/em><\/p>\n So, I said,\u00a0I’ll see you again soon, Aunt Jean.\u00a0<\/em>And then you were gone.<\/p>\n Love,<\/p>\n Your niece, Nancy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" That spring morning in April, your granddaughter held the phone to your ear when I called, you on your deathbed, me standing alone at the back slider. I cried as your gravelly voice came over the wire, systems shutting down at age 98. I knew…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1134,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,441],"tags":[3579],"class_list":["post-64365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-half-marathon-poem","category-poetry-prompt-responses","tag-poetry2020halfmarathonepistolary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1134"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64365"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64910,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64365\/revisions\/64910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}