You of the cat’s eye glasses, the girdles, the purse that closed with a satisfying click. You let me eat maraschino cherries and pimento olives out of the jar from the refrigerator I opened with a pull. You work the night shift at the phone company so your days are free.

You, who were with me when JFK was shot and cried as you sat on the sofa in your robe, legs splayed, stockings rolled down, crying as the cortege rolled by.

Your house, where visitors dropped by unannounced. You turned no one away, not your son, who dumped his two children on you, not Uncle Sal, who walked from the Bronx for a seat at your table.

You write a list in your elegant hand and send me to the Ukrainian man in a white apron at the Corner Store who smells of smoke.

½ a pound of Virginia ham

½ a pound of bologna

½ a pound of yellow American

Six rolls

He says nothing as he slices the meat and catches it in a cupped hand, wraps it in waxed paper,  takes my twenty and pushes a big brown bag across the faded linoleum counter. His unsmiling prune face unable to thank me.

You, who on your deathbed in Miseracordia Hospital wanted to see me in my graduation dress. "How pretty you look," you said, though I had braces and frizzy hair I tried to flatten. I kissed your cheek, now wrinkled and deflated and already cold.

Was it the nitrates from the cold cuts, the sausages or the London broil you grilled in your first backyard that killed you? Or the pack of Tareytons I regularly bought for you at the Corner Store. The old Ukrainian man slid them across the counter, saying nothing.

Image by Daniele Merola.