BLACK LEATHER COAT

Gwen loved shopping.  Even during her final days, when she was barely able to sit herself up in bed, she would ask me every day when we were going to go do some Christmas shopping.  To say that I was never particularly fond of shopping would be an understatement.  It wasn't the shopping so much as her inability to make decisions that would frustrate me.   And, of course, even after the decision was made and the item  purchased and taken home, it was important to keep the receipt because there was a good chance it would be returned.  (How she ever decided to keep me around for 47 years is beyond my understanding.  I suppose it's because I didn't come with a receipt.)

A  particularly poignant memory of a shopping experience with Gwen came to me when, shortly after her death, tucked away in a drawer, I found some costume jewelry from Macy's.  It was a pair of clip-on earrings and matching necklace.  Immediately, it brought to mind a particularly frustrating shopping experience.  Last summer,  Gwen had decided that she wanted to wear earrings and a necklace when she was lying in state at her wake.  (Yes, we did talk about that sort of thing.)  She had worn pierced earrings all her life, but the holes in her ears had grown over, so we had to find clip-on earrings.  Not an easy task, as I discovered after pushing her in her wheelchair through most of the stores in the mall that sold jewelry.  We finally found something that pleased us at Macy's. She then put them away somewhere safe, and I forgot all about them when the time came to use them.  My daughters found very nice jewelry for her to wear at her wake, but I was so disappointed when I came across the earrings and necklace we had searched for so long, days after her funeral.   And, even more upsetting, I had lost the receipt, and wasn't able to return them.  This poem isn't about the jewelry, it's about a coat we found that Gwen loved immediately, but  she thought was way too expensive--those Yooper roots run deep:

BLACK LEATHER COAT

 Her expensive black leather coat

still hangs in the closet of our bedroom.

We debated so long

before buying it

at a little shop in Kerrytown.

It’s an awful lot for a coat, John.

It’s handmade by poor peasants in Paraguay, Gwen,

and you look so nice in it.

I  only had to take it back once

before she decided to keep it.

I thought I might give it to

some deserving poor person.

On second thought,

I’m deserving, aren’t I?

I’m keeping it.

John A. Bayerl, February 11, 2011

I knew that part about being made by poor peasants would get to her; she was always on the side of the underdog.  When I'm finished with this posting I'm going to find that jewelry and put it in one of the pockets of the  black leather coat. She did look so nice in that coat.