My great-grandmother whose
name I cannot remember
had Alzheimer’s
A mammoth woman
Bones bent like my father’s
She left letters for witches
at the foot of his bed
(Although I never could
find out what they said)
Cured his sore throat with
the white of chicken dung
mixed with blackstrap molasses
It took eight men to carry her
down Joseph’s Hill that spring
she crossed the veil
The damp earth mashed
and wagon axle deep
First leg of a long journey
Back the single-tracked Barrens Road
(although in truth her journey
was much longer)
The country kitchen door finally shut
on the sweet hayfields of her life
The gore of Margaret Smith's mad murder
the mother, covered in blood, standing
at midnight by the foot of her bed
Her handsome husband
Joseph the blacksmith
counting the coins of his day’s labour
spilling from his leather pouch
as he falls dead on her kitchen table
(The Pleasant River wild with strife
She took him home to Begger Settlement
Buried him at the graveyard’s edge)
Her
turn
now
to
journey
Far
out
and
beyond
NOTE: Baker Settlement, named for another German
ancestor and Hessian deserter, Georg Baker, sounded ‘Begger Settlement’ in
South Shore dialect. Lavinia was born to Charles Boliver and Elizabeth
Weagel on 30 Aug 1847 along Pleasant River Road (probably current day
Baker Settlement). She died at 1:30 a.m.
on 7 May 1929 in Colpton, Lunenburg County. She was 81 years old. Cause of death was senile degeneration. It was a particularly wet spring.
