Charlie's Great-Grandmother

I died two days after Charlie was born

They wheeled me into the hospital
To see my great-grandson
And his mother, my granddaughter
Even let me hold him

I was a little afraid
That I would suck the youth out of him
Like a vacuum cleaner
But he looked at me
With those little brown eyes
And I knew something about life
That I never knew before

I fantasized in my mind
About running away with Charlie

Well, not running, so to speak
But wheeling away with him
Down the hospital corridor
And into the world

Ready to teach him all I knew about life

Ironically, death was just around the corner

We all like to think we're invincible
And then we wake up one day
To find that we're no longer breathing
And yet we still worry that we left the toaster on last night
Before going to bed

I'm sure you're wondering what I'm doing here
Since I clearly didn't spend much time
With my great-grandson

I came to tell you that whatever problems there are with him
They're my fault

You can usually trace any faults in a person's character
Back to a particular relative
And I'm that relative for Charlie

My mother was a lovely woman
And so was her mother
And my father was very nice as well
But I was a heinous harpie
For most of my life

I was cruel to my daughter
And cold to my granddaughter
And so it's no surprise
That both of them turned out awful
And subsequently
Charlie wound up with a few character flaws of his own

I came here to ask you
To blame me
For any problems with Charlie

I don't know why I was such a deplorable person when I was alive

According to my own theory
There should be someone to blame
But I've been dead for so long
Life has begun looking like a Rorshach test

I keep staring at it
Trying to figure out what it was
But all I see is a rabbit being eaten by a cloud

If I could, I would apologize to Charlie
And his mother
And her mother
And Charlie's daughter

If I was given an extra life on Earth
I would have to spend all of it
Apologizing for things I did in my first life

Instead I just float above the physical beings
Living out their lives below

Hoping one day
I won't be able to see
The traces of my influence
My inheritance
Anymore