how old would you be if you lived to one hundred and four? inside, did it feel like you had grown larger than everything, filled all of your organs with all of the things you had born witness to? childless, we have nothing to carry on from you and the rest of us are looser than we were before, a swallow at the top of a barn, not attached to anything. you have been alive for all of my life, and longer, you have parted your hair to the side and tied a bow in it. we have marked the passage of time, played out the visual games of aging, watched the process as it wormed itself across your skin. and it is many things, this passing. it is a release, i am sure, from the crevice of your bed. it is an isolation from the past and the understanding that you were the last of my mothers family, and you are gone now. and so we begin again.