A quarter of pandrops

This is a poem for my great grandmother - who outlived nearly all the men in her life. As an old lady she lived downstairs from my grandmother and used to do the potatoes for sunday dinner.

The crochet queen for a hundred years,
She brings the potatoes up steaming
the smell filling up the room as she nears
Adored for her tatties she was so good at
It’s not her fault she can’t remember them

Matriarch for a ton - you led with a word and a pandrop
It’s unlikely to be necessary. Widowed for 40 years nary a fear - never a fear.
For the strong willed leader who teatered for a moment in '67 then
led for half a life alone with family

Can this be why she cried at night
To see the boys grow up so fast - and
leave her where she began a hundred
years on

A sea-faring life took her man far too young
no more to mend the nets and tend the home
with half and eye on the horizon and half a heart on this life
All your hopes lie in the next gen.

“I pass it on, I pass it on
Take it and run, grow with it and find
my time is done and all I had was to
pass it on”

Through your eyes, I see
Through your ears, I hear
Through your mind, I run
Pass it on, Pass it on.