Dennis Mealor – Art <dm@dennismealor.net>

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).