Interestingly, I sent this to Jean Jones and Ana Ribeiro and they both suggested the same edit. So, this is an edited version of what I posted previously. I wasn’t sure how it opens, if it works, but I think it’s fine.

Tears for Grandmother’s Passing

I'm sorry Grandmother,
that I didn't give it more thought
when you would ask me
to look around your home
at the years of accumulated items -
mementos, items handed down for generations -
Photographs!
I don't know if I didn't realize in time
the importance of things like this
or if I thought there would be time later
for thinking of these things.
Maybe we just don't like thinking
of loss or death.
I know you didn't intend for things
to go this way...
to just fade away
dying in some nursing home,
fading out of awareness over
those last years...
not aware of those times when
my Mom and Dad  - your son -
came to see you,
or not recognizing your son...
sometimes not aware
that your husband had died
years earlier
and that your daughter had died
before you, years earlier -
maybe that's for the best.
Mom and Dad didn't even bring me
to see you those last years -
telling me it wouldn't matter...
I would maybe have mattered to me,
then again, who knows.
It would have hurt...
it would have been too late
to talk about those things
left unsaid,
to talk about what you would leave behind
for me.
It would have been too late.
But Grandmother,
I shed tears for you today,
again, when I began this poem,
for you, for your memory, again,
five months after I began it originally.
It's okay though,
I miss you.
I remember...
And the occasional tears
seem right
and good.

Bruce Whealton,
Revised October 7, 2009