Remembering Not to Call

"Remembering Not to Call" is a poem about forgetting that our departed loved ones are no longer with us. I wrote "Remembering Not to Call" after losing my mother to covid pneumonia.

I read Sherman Alexie’s “Grief Calls Us to the Things of This World” recently, and it reminded me of this poem, since they both involve making a phone call to someone who will never be there to receive it…

Remembering Not to Call
by Michael R. Burch

a villanelle permitting mourning, for my mother, Christine Ena Burch

The hardest thing of all,
after telling her everything,
is remembering not to call.

Now the phone hanging on the wall
will never announce her ring:
the hardest thing of all
for children, however tall.

And the hardest thing this spring
will be remembering not to call
the one who was everything.

That the songbirds will nevermore sing
is the hardest thing of all
for those who once listened, in thrall,
and welcomed the message they bring,
since they won’t remember to call.

And the hardest thing this fall
will be a number with no one to ring.

No, the hardest thing of all
is remembering not to call.