[Y]oung Writers Project, an independent nonprofit based in Burlington, engages young people to write and use digital media to express themselves with clarity and power, and to gain confidence and skills for school, the workplace and life.
Check out the most recent issue of The Voice, Young Writers Project’s monthly digital magazine. Click here.
Each week, VTDigger features a writing submission – an essay, poem, fiction or nonfiction – accompanied by a photo or illustration from Young Writers Project.
YWP publishes about 1,000 students’ work each year here, in newspapers across Vermont, on Vermont Public Radio and in YWP’s monthly digital magazine, The Voice. Since 2006, it has offered young people a place to write, share their photos, art, audio and video, and to explore and connect online at youngwritersproject.org. For more information, please contact Anna Forsythe at anna@youngwritersproject.org.
The influence grandparents and older relatives have on a person during their formative years is easy enough to see. Often the most vivid memories we have of these characters in our early lives, however, involve the deterioration of their mental or physical faculties. This week St. Albans student Abby Simmons looks back on the times she spent with her great-grandmother, who slipped into dementia soon after the death of her husband. Albeit a frightening topic to confront, Simmons does so bravely and with compassion.
Remembering you
By Abby Simmons
[W]hat I remember of you is very little.
I was young when you passed.
I remember when you gave me,
a five-year-old,
four lollipops.
Your reasoning?
“Two in each hand,
so you don’t lose balance and fall over.”
I remember you at your husband’s wake.
You cried over his casket.
“The worst day of my life,” you said.
It was soon forgotten.
I remember visiting you.
You offered us ice cream,
and I felt uncomfortable –
but that’s not your fault.
You didn’t know that Grampy
wouldn’t be coming home today.
You didn’t know he’d been gone so long.
We let you live in your ignorant bliss.
I remember that you didn’t look the same.
You laid expressionless, your face flatter
than the round, plump smiles I was used to.
They had your hair just right, though –
blonde ringlets framing your face,
as you slept under the orchids.
I remember sitting in your home
without you, dividing up your jewelry.
You’d wanted your great-granddaughters to have it.
I didn’t get to chance to know you well,
but I wish I could have.
