A Bit Late – But Late Doesn’t Matter
Submitted by Anne. Written Christmas Day 2000
Meant for Mother’s Day.
“Please find attached a poem I wrote for my mother late in her life.“
The New American Digest
For Followers of Gerard Van der Leun's Fine Work
Submitted by Anne. Written Christmas Day 2000
Meant for Mother’s Day.
“Please find attached a poem I wrote for my mother late in her life.“
To me the poem expresses a lot of deep emotional ups and downs very “realistically”. As can only be by one who has experienced it. Thanks.
This morning I went to IGA and purchased a few items and checked my lottery tickets.
Upon leaving I told the check out gurl, “Thank you very much and have a pleasant rest of the day/” She replied, “Thank you, and you do likewise>”
On the road home I went Helmsburg Rd of course and it gives me space to think.
I thought, what if that check out gurl was the last person I ever talked to?
Would I be comfortable with my last earthly words?
So heartfelt, Anne. Lovely.
Thank you Jean!
I hope you were able to share it with her, Anne. I’m sure she
loved it or would have.
I did. No comment, but it was on the wall in her retirement apartment. What really hurts is that she was accoridng to my grandma “a difficult child”–“very nervous”. Grandma said she was able to keep her in school through sixth grade, but after that was difficult. In today’s world she would be considered very serious obsessive compulsive disorder. Able to sit for hours doing very fine Tiffany eggs, but not able to last for more than three or four minutes in a conversation. Keenly alert. She had two books in her retirement mobile home (very nice park), one was the King James and the other was Joan Crawford’s “mommy dearest”.
She had been driving the car that killed her younger brother who she loved very much. He was riding in one of those hatches on the back of the car (1938 +/-). When the police arrived at the scene of the accident she was holding his head in her lap–his body was on the other side of the car. She sat in her room for two years, and by the way gram described her she was nearly catatonic. The doctors wanted to put her away, but grandma agreed to having electro shock treatments and keeping her at home. Two treatments and she began to come back. Grandma got her into beauty operator class and that is how she supported herself for many years.
I am clearly a unplanned war baby. When I was two she demanded and received a hysterectomy “I don’t want any more of these(babies)”. That surgery led her down the road to a severe rounded back.
She was always thoughtful of me and made sure I had what was needed. Sometimes we shared thoughts and laughter. I never felt unloved. Several weeks before she died, she told me ” I am one of those women who never bonded with her baby. I am tired of paying the price for that!”. That was a big idea and big words for my mom, I knew she had picked it up from the women in the retirement center.
All those years she fought for her own life, she moved away from grandma when I was about six.She moved all the way out to California where she opened her own little beauty shop and cleaned offices at night. She was free! All I ever had to do was clean house on Saturday and hang out the towels from her beauty shop several times a week before going out, and be home in time for supper during the week. She drove me to church several times a week, but seldom came to any services. I always had a tidy clean home in a nice middle class neighborhood.There was never any real conversation.
Was there something missing? I don’t know. Maybe, but I don’t know what it would have been. I never felt un-loved,but in looking back I see there was something missing.
I forgot to add–in later life she worked for the trust department in the local bank. Her job was to check on the house bound clients of the trust department to make sure they were getting the services the bank was paying for–not bad for a kid with a 6th grade education! Women were never kind to her.