Poem: Nowhere To Be Found

On August 24th, 2011 at around 8:30 in the morning Adam Lambert's chorus from "If I Had You" (my ringtone at the time) started blasting from my cell phone. This is one of my favorite songs, yet hearing it then didn't bring a smile to my face, especially when I looked up the caller ID and saw that it was my paternal grandmother calling. I wondered why she was calling at such an early hour. Something just didn't seem right. She never called this early.

I picked up the phone expecting to hear my grandmother's voice. Instead I heard the voice of her home attendant telling me that she had come into the house, so still and quiet, to find my grandmother unmoving in her bed, my grandfather lying beside her, his hand stroking her head. I managed to hold it together while she was on the phone with me—telling me the sad, shocking news and then complaining about how she couldn't get a hold of my parents for a long time. She had every right to complain because the body had been lying there for hours and needed to be moved to the funeral home. But that was not something I wanted to hear. I had to try to get a hold of my parents but more importantly I wanted to go and see my grandmother for the last time and say my good-bye.

After I hung up the phone the waterworks started. I was shaking and I couldn't stop crying. I could not believe she was gone...

It was hard for me to find out that my grandmother was no longer with us. It tore me up inside and for a long time I could not come to terms with her passing. For a while it felt as if she were still with us. More than once I had the urge to pick up the phone and call her, or stop by her house for a visit, but of course there was no one to call, no one to visit. She was gone and nothing would bring her back.

One day I came to the cemetery to visit my grandmother. I scanned for her grave, scanned for that little name tag—the headstone wasn't put up yet—to let me know where she was peacefully dreaming but it was nowhere to be found. I looked everywhere near where her grave site should be but it was all in vain. I started to panic and wondered why her grave was nowhere in sight. Suddenly this thought came into my head: Why am I looking for her here in the cemetery when I should be visiting her in her own home? She isn't dead. She is in her bed peacefully dreaming...

With a burial taking place nearby I had no choice but to stop looking for her and go home. Before leaving I went into the management office and told them that I couldn't find my grandmother's grave. They took out a map of the grounds and showed me where it was. Turns out I didn't look far enough. I let out a sigh of relief that she was all right but then it dawned on me that I had come to the right place after all. She was not in her bed peacefully dreaming beside her husband. She was here, alone in this cold underground lair that has become her new home...

This experience inspired me to write an emotional poem about the loss of a loved one called "Nowhere To Be Found", which I am sharing below.

I come to visit you

Amongst the tombstones and piles of dirt

To place some carnations and stones

Onto your new underground lair

To reminisce about the days that passed

And talk of days to come

I come to say hello

Come to say how much I miss you

How much I love you

My eyes scan for your name tag

But it is nowhere to be found

I wonder if you’ve been

Evicted from your new home

Or if I’ve simply come to the wrong address

Perhaps you’re still there in your old home

Lying beside your husband peacefully dreaming

© 2012 Lena Kovadlo