Poem For A Cousin That Passed Away

Okay, so, you know how sometimes you gotta write a poem for a cousin who, well, shuffled off this mortal coil? It’s a tough gig, right? Like trying to explain cryptocurrency to your grandma, but with more tear-jerking and significantly less opportunity for her to accidentally buy Dogecoin. My cousin, let’s call him Barnaby (because Barnaby sounds like someone who’d accidentally invent a new flavor of potato chip that tasted suspiciously like sadness and regret), recently became a permanent resident of the Great Beyond. And the family, being the dramatic bunch we are, decided a poem was in order. A loving poem, mind you. Not a “Dear Barnaby, hope you’re not hogging all the good cloud chairs” kind of poem, although that was tempting.

Now, Barnaby… Barnaby was a character. The kind of character who, if he were a kitchen appliance, would be a waffle iron that occasionally burned your toast but also made surprisingly good pancakes. He was loud. He was a bit clumsy. And he had a laugh that could curdle milk at fifty paces. But underneath all that, he was our loud, clumsy, milk-curdling laugh guy. And that’s what we were trying to capture in this poem. It's a delicate dance, folks. You want to honor their memory without sounding like you’re reading from a dusty, forgotten thesaurus. Nobody wants a poem that rhymes “bereft” with “left… on the sofa, watching TV again.”

So, I sat down, armed with a lukewarm coffee and the vague notion that Barnaby wouldn’t appreciate anything too flowery. He once tried to prune a rose bush with a chainsaw. True story. The roses… well, let’s just say they looked like they’d had a very intense, very short, very aggressive haircut. So, flowery was out. Rhyming “sorrow” with “tomorrow” was definitely out. Barnaby’s sorrow was usually followed by a dramatic declaration that he was “going to eat his feelings” and then a frantic search for the emergency cookie stash. Which, incidentally, he’d usually hidden from himself.

The first draft was a disaster. It sounded like a robot that had accidentally swallowed a greeting card. I tried to weave in his love for collecting novelty socks. You know, the ones with tacos or tiny astronauts? He had a drawer full, a veritable sock-topia. I wrote a line about his “feet, once clad in stellar hues.” My aunt, bless her heart, read it and said, “Stellar hues? Was he an alien who wore glitter socks?” Close, Aunt Carol, but no cigar. More like, he was a terrestrial who wore socks depicting grumpy cats. A subtle but important distinction.

Then there was the joke about his uncanny ability to find the most awkward family photo from every holiday. It’s like he had a sixth sense for embarrassing snapshots. I tried to capture that with something like, “He’d unearth the photos, a digital delight.” My uncle, who’s more of a “stare blankly at the wall” kind of guy, just grunted and asked if I remembered the one of Barnaby wearing a tiny sombrero and a fake mustache at Thanksgiving. Yes, Uncle George, that one’s permanently etched into my brain. Like a bad tattoo, but funnier.

We needed something with oomph. Something that said, “Yeah, Barnaby, you were a goofball, but you were our goofball.” The surprising facts came in handy here. Did you know Barnaby once won a hot dog eating contest? Yeah, the man had appetite. And a surprisingly strong stomach for processed meat. I thought about mentioning it, but then I pictured the poem being read at the service and envisioning a crowd suddenly craving a foot-long. Not ideal. So, the hot dog anecdote stayed on the cutting room floor, alongside the chainsaw pruning incident.

The key, I discovered, is to focus on the feeling. The essence of the person. Barnaby’s essence was like a surprise party that you didn’t know you were invited to, but you’re glad you showed up, even if someone accidentally set off the confetti cannon in your hair. So, I started thinking about his quirks, his infectious (and sometimes alarming) enthusiasm for absolutely anything that involved a snack or a questionable decision. He once decided to learn the bagpipes. For a week. The noise was… memorable. The neighbors probably still have PTSD.

I settled on a few lines about his “spirit, wild and free, like a rogue balloon at a wedding.” That felt about right. He was never one to be tied down by convention. If there was a rule, Barnaby was probably looking for the loophole, or just gleefully ignoring it. He was the guy who’d try to pay for groceries with Monopoly money, just to see if it would work. It never did, but the attempt was always legendary.

The surprising fact I did manage to weave in? Barnaby was surprisingly good at origami. Like, really good. He could fold a crane that looked like it was about to take flight. Who knew? This was the same guy who struggled to assemble IKEA furniture without invoking the wrath of a Swedish furniture deity. But origami? He was a zen master of paper folding. So, I wrote a bit about his “hands, once clumsy, now so deft, creating beauty from paper’s soft theft.” See? It’s all about finding those unexpected gems.

In the end, the poem wasn't perfect. No poem ever truly is. It probably had a few too many references to his questionable fashion choices (he once wore a bright orange fanny pack with a tuxedo. A tuxedo.) and maybe not enough about his surprisingly insightful advice on… well, mostly on what kind of chips to buy. But it was ours. It was filled with the laughter, the exasperation, and the undeniable love we all had for Barnaby. And that, my friends, is the real magic of a poem for a departed cousin. It’s a way to bottle up all those wild, wonderful memories and share them, a little bit of humor, a little bit of heartache, and a whole lot of love. And maybe, just maybe, it’s a reminder that even in grief, there’s always room for a good laugh. Especially if it involves a rogue balloon or a perfectly folded paper crane.