I'll Be Seeing You
- Laney Gipson
- Mar 25, 2020
- 2 min read
I think I’ll be seeing you forever,
in the cathedrals of Italy,
on the coasts of England,
and floating between the precious memories of then and now.
You course through my bones,
the spirit of going,
the spirit of doing -
boldly, almost unapologetically
with cautious abandon,
trusting your own heart
as if knowing it could only fail you in the most beautiful ways.
I carry the eyes of a grandpa I never met,
but I see only through yours.
The opportunities to teach,
the opportunities to learn.
The moments to stay,
the moments to go.
The pictures worth taking
and the pictures worth painting.
I’ll feel you in
every moment I think I can do more than expected
and in every moment I know that I should.
I’ll hear you in the books
that you left sitting on your shelves,
the boxes of memories still left to unpack -
the stories you never had time to tell.
But we’ll make time.
We’ll listen to sad songs about being sad
and laugh about the ways you always made us.
We’ll sit together, all too many of us
unique, loved and delicately weathered
every one, a portrait of the things you taught so well.
You laid the groundwork for me to do brave things,
to feel the fire of seeing somewhere up-close for the first time,
to understand the wonder of what it feels to see the Eiffel Tower light up at midnight,
and to dream about what could be lying just around the next bend.
I’ll see you in pink powdered bathrooms & magnets from cheap souvenir stores.
sunrises that hit the horizon in the perfect collections of violets & yellows,
and the lingering last words of a good book finished too soon.
We’ll be missing you,
but you’ll be doing what you do best -
living limitlessly, unrestrained by the hinderance of time & health,
& free, sitting alongside Heaven’s distant shores, wandering through Heaven’s most immaculate places.
And you’ll be with me,
and you’ll be with us,
as we continue to write a story
you had only just begun.
In Loving Memory of my Grandma, Betty Gipson (June 4, 1927 - March 23, 2020)
Comments