Memorial Service
A Poem by Timothy Steele
For Nancy Huddleston Packer, 28 December 2025 The speakers well evoke the teacher, mother, Friend, and grandmother. Thus, her life is closed, As in the fine short stories she composed. We rise and, with refreshments, greet each other And talk about sports, politics, and art Or fumble as our piece of cheddar slips Off of its cracker inches from our lips. Then, trading hugs and fist bumps, we depart. And bear, as she would, in our homeward traveling The old and new imperatives of wit: Be kind and truthful. Though it seems unraveling, Defend the State: stand up to Trump and ICE. Read all the novels of George Eliot And Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda twice.
La Conversation, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, c. 1876
When Tim writes, "Thus, her life is closed," I can't help but think of Tennyson's "Ulysses":
"Death closes all: but something ere the end, / Some work of noble note, may yet be done, / Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods." https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45392/ulysses
"Thus, her life is closed,
As in the fine short stories she composed." Lovely elegiac sonnet.