To my Mother

To My Mother

Obedient daughter, dutiful wife, much-loved mother,
victim of cruel cancer that snatched you from those who held you dear,
ever long-suffering, uncomplaining, resigned to your fate,
a woman of ample girth, yet in your own eyes, small in worth,
resembling more the moth in shadow than butterfly in light,
you hid your natural beauty beneath such dowdy dress.

Fearful of life, anxiety was your constant companion.
The first clap of thunder sent you scuttling to your cubby-hole beneath the stairs.
A thin line separated joy from sorrow along your daily path.
It took so little to make you laugh and sing and dance.
Again, the tears of hurt lay close to the surface.
Equally sensitive were you to praise and criticism.

A single sweet, a posy of wild flowers, a simple message on a card
were received as precious gifts showered from Above.
Your creativeness was as the fruitful vine.
Ten of your sixteen pregnancies passed into oblivion.
Did you often weep for them as you wept for us survivors?
So much childbirth surely sapped your energy.

Your life moved ponderously on, along its undeviating path,
meals at set times, scarce pennies juggled to feed so many hungry mouths.
We took you so much for granted till that final summons came.
As we watched your life ebb slowly away in tortured pain,
we had to stand helpless by while you faced a cruel death alone.
We heard you cry out to your own mother long gone before you.

“I have reached the gates of Heaven,” were your final words to us.
“I have but to knock and wait till Jesus lets me enter.”
The days that followed were long-drawn-out for the watchers by your bed
as you lay comatose between this world and the next.
A life of such unfaltering faith, led by precepts of the Bible
surely earned for you a place of honour in Paradise forever.

Measured by the hand dealt out to you on earth by Fate
you deserve much more than mere oblivion in your present state.
The best memorial we can raise to you
is to live according to the standards set by your example.
You had so little in the way of worldly goods
yet your life was always full of gratitude and prayer.

Sometimes a lord or bishop visited you in your humble home
and once you were excited when the US President
flew over in a helicopter, the great and mighty looking down
on the humble folk beneath him on the ground.
As you told these tales of visitors, I think you wanted us
to be proud of you, our mother, and indeed we were just that.

A name engraved on a headstone in a quiet country church,
old photographs that captured moments in her life,
a password for recognition in the bank or on computer,
an Easter card sent to me with love over fifty years ago,
occasional visits in my sleep as of the past I dream,
all these combine to keep my mother’s memory alive.