Shark's Mouth Newsletter

Hooray for Arthur's diligent work on the life of Ibby Halsted.

If some of you are wondering why I wasn't represented in it, it may be because what I gave him was too long. It was a poem some of you have seen or heard, which I read at her Memorial Service in January 07. Here it is (hang on, it's long):

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Ode to Isabella: January 13, 2007

It’s time! Oh yes, it’s time! for me to cast a fulsome rhyme
Toward each attentive pink and shell-like ear;
Let us praise and let us honor, let us shower love upon ‘er
Our late mother, in-law, granny, Ibby dear.

How shall we celebrate this our Isabella late?
We’ve come from near and far to sing hosanna.
To take enormous pleasure in recalling every measure
Of the highs and lows of her life’s panorama.

She was born, sure enough, in a house upon a bluff
In Manchester her wondrous life began.
“It really is uncanny,” said our Grandpa to our Granny,
“It looks like we are carrying out some master plan.

“The world will soon be swimmin’ in a sea of charming women
As our tribe of lovely daughters just increases
It really will be super when just I and Mr. Hooper
Are surrounded here by females of the species.”

Isabella and her sisters grew up among few misters
In that little patch of heaven they called “Manch”
They learned to read and write and reason, enjoying every season
And got a lot of guidance from their Aunts.

They traveled round the world, in Boston’s social life they whirled,
And soon discovered that out there were men!
So then young Isabella set out to find a fella,
And soon caught a handsome doctor in her pen.

So Ibby and her Jim set out to sink or swim
In the sea of opportunities life had fed ‘em
With two daughters and two boys, they experienced the joys
And the challenges of life they found in Dedham.

But along came the War, and soon their marriage was no more,
And she feared, instead of swimming, she would sink.
She was so unhappy when she split up with our Pappy,
But then she had this good news from her shrink:

“You’ll feel much better, dear, if you try a new career,
“Take up typing; it will open many a door.”
Well the rest is history: soon she found BCIV
And began a life she’d never known before.

Why, all across the planet there were folks who thought she ran it,
So surely did she make them all feel blest;
And in welcoming the world, she her own bright flag unfurled,
With skills she never knew that she possessed.

From then on how she grew! there was The Claiming of the Shoe,
That put her name in lights ‘longside the Bard,
And every Sunday people mark just how lovely Riverbend Park
Can be when Mem Drive’s thoroughly dis-carred.

Soon her facile fountain pen produced “The Aunts” and then
She set right out to write another sequel,
And the chuckles she engendered from old songs that she remembered
Brought enchantment it was mighty hard to equal.

Well her life grew simpler then, as she set aside her pen
And traded in her Peugeot for a bed.
Crossword puzzles, games of Boggle, finding words to make you goggle,
These pleasures took up all her time instead.

Then one day Isabella overwhelmed me and Gissela
By announcing that she’d soon be traveling far
To a place she’d never been. “Oh, where’s that?” we both chimed in.
A long pause… “To Cuba!” she replied. “Ha ha ha ha”!

But it wasn’t long thereafter that an end came to her laughter
And she drifted off to sleep beyond recall.
But perhaps some Cuban fella painted “Bienvenida Isabella!”
On old Havana’s Malecón seawall.

So let’s raise our glasses high, let our shouts ring through the sky,
As we toast the one who’s brought us so much pleasure,
We are sad as you depart but you’re forever in our heart
And the memories that we will always treasure.
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I should add that the "Cuba" anecdote is almost verbatim. Gisella was one of her wonderful loving caregivers. Missing from the poem's description is the twinkle in Ibby's eye as she delivered the punch line.

Except for the occasional telltale reference to going home(e.g., "Show me the way to go home," "Give me a Home by the Sea," etc.), which she would occasionally burst into, she never alluded to her impending death, until I had this conversation with her, as she lay in her bed in the Nusery, some time in September 2006:

Ibby: "Am I a hundred yet?"
Tom: "Not, yet -- but you are in your hundredth year."
Ibby (still trying to compete with Happy, who had died at 101): "Well, I guess that's good enough."