09.07
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I Lost My Mum
(A poem by Dennis Mealor)
I lost my Mum to Alzheimer’s,
Forgot
The things we did
In the English Spring and Summer
When I was just a kid.
Her memories
All behind her,
Lost in a vault of haze.
My memories, likewise faded
As she lay in a bed that says
Nothing.
Of who this woman was,
Or who this woman is,
My Mother,
A shell inside a nursing home,
A bedded, sheeted quiz.
I lost my Mum to Alzheimer’s
But now she’s gone for good.
And ‘good’ the operative word I feel,
As she tore her Earthly hood
And cast away the garments,
Of the body that held her back,
And took off into yonder
And not only,
But in fact:
Her memories have returned.
She is in the room again.
Wherever I go I feel her warmth,
Her presence and her pen
That wrote and wrote in diaries
And memoirs in my mind,
The haze has lifted for me too,
I see her face,
Her eyes
As I used to see them
As a child,
No more than just a kid
And memories come flooding back
Of all she said and did.
(Gone Home, and Free at Last. Will always love and miss you, Mum).