It used to be a yearly Easter tradition starting as long ago as I can remember for my mother to give me marshmallow Peeps every Easter Sunday. The trend went way into my adulthood no matter what. Some years, I got bright yellow chick Peeps or even the cute bunny ones with the big ears. I think she enjoyed giving them to me more than I enjoyed receiving them; I’d outgrown the sickeningly sugary taste years before.
A ten pack of hot pink chick Peeps sits in my cupboard year ’round and is a constant reminder of the last thing my mother purchased for me before she passed away almost two years ago. Occasionally, I take them out of the cupboard and poke at their heads as their beady-eyes stare up at me. Over time they’ve gotten stiffer and stiffer until now they’re harder than a rock. I’m not even sure why I’m keeping this stale pack of Peeps because sadly they remind me how sudden the rigor mortis started to set in as my sister and I waited for the funeral home to come from 100 miles away to pick up my mother’s body from the home she loved and take her away.
As we waited, my quick-thinking sister instructed me to take the rings off my mother’s left hand before it would be too late. It was a task that nobody in their lifetime should have to do, but sometimes you have to do things that you don’t want to do. I’m glad we kept those rings away from the ring cutter. Life is strange. I think I’ll hang onto those Peeps a while longer.
Taisie Design 
Dear Leslie,
This is the stuff of poems, written in the form of a prose-poem. I loved reading it. Like the poems I like best,we get to follow the mind of the writer through associations–images, feelings and thoughts. Most often in that order. That’s what I love here- the trip through the mind/ heart to the mother. And like the best elegies, we end up with a sense of the mother still living in the speaker’s heart, which I think is the most important work of any elegy– bringing the living back to life in a moment that now is fixed in time. It makes those we love outlive themselves and even us. What a loving thing to do!
Love, Susan
Susan,
I appreciate your comment, especially from someone that’s such a great poet! When I sat down to write the blog post, I originally was going to only write about the history of Peeps but after I pulled them out of the cupboard to take their photo, I realized how much more they meant to me. Weird how things like that happen. take care, Leslie