Can you go through the step-by-step process of writing this poem from the moment the idea was first conceived in your brain until final form? In the last years of my Granddaddy’s life, he had Sundowners Dementia. Sundowning happens in the late afternoon or early evening when the daylight fades, which can cause confusion, anxiety, and/or aggression. I’m a theatre teacher and I decided to role-play with my grandfather during these trying times to divert his attention to something that he loved and gave his life to – truck-driving.
What is Sundowners Dementia?https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/22840-sundown-syndrome
MIDDLE: Molly Rice’s grandmother on the CB radio.
BOTTOM: Molly Rice as a child with her grandfather Harold Thomas Roddy. Copyright by Molly Rice.
As a child, I remember him coming into range and talking to him through the CB radio. His handle was “Diesel Smoke” and mine was “Pinky”. I spoke to him in trucker lingo in role-plays of the road. In writing “Breaker, Diesel Smoke” the first thing I wrote down on the back of a bill envelope from my purse was the striking image of my granddaddy’s black shoes sitting on the window pane – Velcro flaps opened. Ready to go but he was bed-ridden. I thought about his shoes and where they would take him in his afterlife. I jotted that image down and a few trucker words like “what’s your twenty”, “got your ears on”, “10-4”. I took it out of my purse once home and bookmarked a blank page in my poetry journal. I had already faced the death of my brother and mother and knew he was leaving, too. I wanted to time-capsule the moment of his exit since my brother and my mother’s death were both unexpected. I pondered if expected death was easier to grieve. I left my scribbled words that day but knew this poem would come soon. My thoughts kept coming back to this poem. I’d hear it in my head like a skipping record. In my freest moment, I sat down at my dining room table and visited him. I started in his corridor walking down to his room. My pen rushed out “A convoy of memories line up down the corridor” and it didn’t stop. Full verses flooded out. I spoke it as I wrote. I had the trucker lingo book up on a browser tab. I looked up ambulance and got “bone box”. I looked up exhausted and found “checking my eyelids for pinholes”. My pen didn’t stop until the end. Until I signed off. Once I read it out loud a few times I was happy enough to type it up. The way it displayed on the page was quick, too. I read it out again and cried. I had said goodbye. A quiet ceremony for my beloved dying granddaddy with just me and poetry.
Where were you when you started to actually write the poem? And please describe the place in great detail. I often thought while driving down the road to my grandparent’s house that it might be the last time. That slow, surreal, somber maybe-this-is-the-last- time question where you pay attention to every detail in hopes of remembering once they are gone. Those last final moments that Denise Levertov describes in her poem “Living” with the last line “each minute the last minute”.
Click on the below link to read “Living” by Denise Levertov
I was in that head space while walking down the corridor in the Brian Center Health and Rehabilitation Gastonia, NC. The smells and sounds ushering you in to a quick understanding that this place is a waiting room for death. The large nursing home room shared by men who were parked by the wayside of the door, staring at walls or docked outside for fresh air or a smoke. Not much to do but wait. The TV prattling on – a game show or seemingly endless commercials which all seemed ridiculously meaningless. I was happy that Granddaddy had the bed that was close to the window. The trees and birds were comforting. I would often jot down things I heard or things I’d see there. Snapshots I knew would show up in my writing. A deliberate recording.
What month and year did you start writing this poem? I didn’t want to write this poem after my Granddaddy passed away. It was a tandem moment. I was writing in the months up to his death – September, October, 2013. I was coming to terms that he was leaving. It was a real goodbye. He might not have been present enough with me in the room but I could visit and speak with him in my poem.
Were there any lines in any of your rough drafts of this poem that were not in the final version? And can you share them with us? This poem came out in one go like a CB call. It signed on and signed off and nothing really changed from the moment I wrote it.
What do you want readers of this poem to take from this poem? Poetry can do what life cannot. You can go back. You can visit when no one is there. You can say what you didn’t get to. The last loving moments with my grandfather were like the first exciting childhood ones. Holding him in high admiration with full force love in my words and thoughts and art is a forever thing. This poem is a communication between ghosts. The who we once were and the ones we will always be. Watching him go was an honor that I tried to capture in this poem. That my “forever eighty-eights”, my forever hugs and kisses won’t fade even though I won’t see him again in this here and now. I hope that the reader can relate to that precious child and grandparent or parent love.
Which part of the poem was the most emotional of you to write and why? The line, “Come back, Granddaddy.” left me in tears writing it. Speaking his name. Begging him to come back to reality. Begging him to talk to me like he knew me. Begging him to remember me. Begging God to lower the veil so I could be with him in his sound mind. At readings, this is the hardest part not to choke up on.
Click on the below link to purchase Forever Eighty- Eights fromPress 53.
https://www.press53.com/molly-rice
Has this poem been published? And if so where? “Breaker, Diesel Smoke” is from my first full collection Forever Eighty-Eights published by Press 53 in Winston Salem, NC. Editor: Kevin Morgan Watson
Click on the below link to visit Molly Rice’s website
Most of the BACKSTORY OF THE POEM links can be found at the very end of the below feature:
http://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2021/02/will-justice-drakes-intercession-is-251.html