Sestina for My Grandmother

I got the key code from a stranger

written where the fluorescents are flickering
in little diamonds. They act like I’m the undertaker,
carrying the cat painting out to the car, wiping dew
off the frame. It belongs to my grandmother.
Now back through the lobby and its handicapped party.
 
I rejoin our sweet sad party:
my mother, myself, the night nurse, a stranger
and, of course, my grandmother
who was still flickering
while I drove and my eyes filled with dew.
The nurse said we should "ring the undertaker."
 
Mom and I laughed at the word “undertaker.”
We were like a sitcom party,
tired and confused in the late evening dew.
Then this strange stranger’s
headlights appeared flickering
through the window onto my grandmother.
 
The next bed for my grandmother
is a red velvet one brought in by the undertaker
wearing a rumpled suit eyelids flickering
with recent sleep. He joins our party,
a true stranger, 
in a white van disturbing the late evening dew.
 
Later, we came in SUVS and black coats on frozen dew
and grass, singing to our grandmother
and her super glossy headstone; no one’s a stranger.
Our grandfather, whose undertaker
came before sits beside. Our family party
went to eat barbecue with daylight flickering
 
away across the plains. I saw the pink sky flickering,
and by the time the dew
came and toes warmed, our chilly little party
was over and grandmother
was in the ground, the undertaker
returned to work, the only lonely stranger
 
to see it through. Now dew,
nighttime’s undertaker,
sits on her grave. She is less of a stranger.