In Memoriam

Elke died February 15 2018 at 5:30 p.m. at the Mazankowski Heart Institute in Edmonton.
She was surrounded by friends and family in a tearful, poetic, song-filled ceremony of passage.
A fierce, angry, loving, creative and generous spirit has left us and we are diminished by this.
Her memorial was 1:00 p.m. Saturday March 24 at the St. Albert Kinsmen Centre, 47 Riel Dr. Thanks to those who celebrated with us.

I do not know a great many things
I am unsure on familial love, and the matters of blood
I do know that sometimes you were hard on us
I cannot write you a lie
This is neither to admire nor shame you
For I cannot decide whether you death makes me      happy or sad
But I am numb
And this is to remember you
For I hate to forget
 So, this is for you
Elke Ingrid Blodgett
Who came from Leipzig
A pioneer who finally settled in the prairies of Canada
I cannot say I cried heavily at your death
I cannot write you a lie
But tears- silent tears- slid down my cheeks
At the haunting melody of an honour song
And you led a noble and honorable life
 Your name – it means “noble”
So this is for you
And maybe we didn’t always get along
But I do not like to forget
And if at least someone remembers
You cannot fall victim to oblivion
You hold meaning
I guess I lied after all
For I do know that family means something
In one way or another
– Melody (Charlie) Gill (née Emily)
February 15 2018
Ade
Speaking to you a last time, I spoke into emptiness,
and when words came, they did not seem to come, or came as things
that might have stuttered, had they spoken, and left themselves unfinished, half
in pieces, half complete, like toys abandoned in a childhood
where nothing that was begun could keep up, but rising in the light
of spring a branch of apple flowers appeared as if the weight of all
gravity was here, its fragility but barely moving
in the slight breeze, standing perhaps in water, its brief life
 of flowers that like candles flicker through the passing of their lives,
the greater gravity gathered in the fire that they bear,
all beauty, all passion flowered in fire, and all breath,
refining spring, the first moment and the last, the memory
of apples rising up before they are: let us say that there
is where you now have gone, into that transfiguring of fire,
your only knowledge carried in your hands, no more visible
than smoke, or mist as if abandoned in the morning light of spring.
E.D. Blodgett
March 2018

Elke Blodgett