The Old Dear Poem by Francis Duggan

She was such a pleasure to meet
So wise and one without conceit
Yet she smoked and she coughed night and day
And now all is quiet where she lay.

She had just reached her seventieth year
The woman known as the Old Dear
When the reaper on her paid a call
The reaper who will claim us all.

With her husband she split years ago
Apart she said we seemed to grow
He found himself another wife
And I just got on with my life.

Their only child a daughter named Sue
On her last birthday turned forty two
With her partner and their teenage girl and boy
She lives far north as the crow fly.

One with an addiction to nicotine
The old dear she often was seen
Puffing on a cigarette
She was one who diced with death.

And though i won't be seeing her again
In my heart she will remain
Till the reaper will claim me
And soon very soon that will be.

Never in a surly mood
Or never knew her to be rude
She would always smile and say
May joy be with you today.

If there's a paradise beyond the sky
Where good souls go to when the body die
She will be there i would bet
Puffing on a cigarette.