Jennifer Wallace Poet Rhyme

Notes About The Poem

For my Gigi, Grandma Liz, as our family prepares to say goodbye. You filled my childhood with laughter, music, summer kitchens, and a kind of love that helped shape the woman I became. This poem is for you—with all my love, all my gratitude, and, as we have always said, routiney stuff.

Routiney Stuff

I cannot picture life without you,
or days your laughter cannot fill,
so my heart wanders back through summers
where I can almost find you still.

Back to your kitchen, warm with garlic,
with sauce left simmering through the day,
where love seemed woven into the walls
in ways that time can't take away.

There'd be seafood pasta on the table,
Caprese and antipasto, too,
but tucked beside those famous dishes
was plain spaghetti, made for me by you.

And somewhere among those summers
came a Coke box worn just like a crown,
passed from grandchild to grandchild
while you laughed and gathered us around.

We have the photographs to prove it;
each of us grinning beneath that silly thing.
Funny what the heart decides to treasure.
Funny what remembering can bring.

I still can see those wild red curls,
the style you carried everywhere,
but nothing made you smile quite like
the promise of a brand-new pair.

I still can see you with the band,
your voice rising clear and bright,
or stepping out upon the stage
as though you were born for its light.

But I loved you best in the kitchen,
standing quietly there by your side,
watching your hands make something from nothing,
never knowing you were shaping my life.

And God, Gigi, I am not ready
for the day I cannot reach for you,
when carrying you within my heart
is the only thing I'm left to do.

I want another summer with you,
another meal, another song,
another silly Coke-box picture;
another lifetime before you're gone.

I want another simple phone call,
another ordinary goodbye,
back when neither one of us knew
how quickly ordinary passes by.

Routiney stuff.

Our little phrase,
the words we'd use to say goodbye,
never knowing something said so simply
would someday make me start to cry.

So, when God comes for you, my Gigi,
I hope there's music where you go,
a stage already lit and waiting,
and all of Heaven to watch your show.

I hope you find the prettiest shoes there,
a pair you’d proudly call your own,
with those wild red curls still dancing
when Heaven joyously welcomes you home.

And when the time comes, I won't say goodbye.
I'll say the words I've always said to you,
because no other words could hold
a lifetime quite the way those two words do.

Routiney stuff, Gigi.

All my hugs.
All my kisses.

Until I see you again.

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