Pre-Grief

Six months until her ninety-third,
Six months of sitting ’round;
The agony of boredom heard,
Despairing life is found.

Pre-grief is not what's called the dawn,
It's mourning fore the death
When you've got nothing, it's all gone,
Agendas are all met.

As I laid out four dozen pics
(Art therapy and such),
I saw a pattern in the mix
A pattern meaning much:

For after loss of therapists
Both times same picture burst,
As in both cases she'd be missed
Thus need to quench my thirst –

A thirst for listening, like with mom
Those years when just a kid,
Round kitchen table, day all done,
We'd cares and burdens rid.

She was the one who took the time
To listen and advise;
It helped us teens to walk the line
An ear of someone wise.

Just like our guides in walking now
Through cancer's troubled way,
We walked through culture-shock somehow
And teenage-hood's tough way.

When father died I analyzed
What all I'd lost just then;
The loss for which I mostly cried –
For colleague and a friend.

But this is different, she's the one
Who opened spirit deep;
Who helped in trouble find the fun
As challenges we'd meet.

She taught me school when teachers failed,
Taught poetry and prose;
Absorbed frustration when I railed;
Made cocoa for repose.

Showed we could paddle moonbeam's path
At camp when sun was set;
Read Dickens, Wordsworth; helped us laugh;
And deal with our regret.

I've walked nine months within her womb,
Now sixty years beside;
Within her heart there's been the room
To sally forth or hide.

They say that mother's death is loss
For son's the hardest kind;
And in it, good and bad are tossed,
As both are brought to mind.

Most ‘bad’ was dealt with long ago,
The rest as memory went;
What's left for me – I see her go
And what to me she meant.

The folks who care for her these days
Are good, but don't recall,
Just who this woman, in her ways,
Was best mom of them all.

It's hard enough for me sometimes
To patient be with mom –
Her patient steps come to my mind
As toddler I would run;

A life laid down that we might live;
Her helping dad by phone;
Those meals to strangers she would give,
Evoking soup from bone–

Of guiding kids who had no home
As faith she'd introduce
Which carried her, who felt alone,
Yet from that life produced –

A life triumphant over stress
A life of vibrant joy
From deep within, each challenge met
As she, her gifts employed.

“If I could do it all again”,
She said to me one day,
“I'd show kids books to ease their pain –
Books make it go away”.

As firelight pushes back the night,
Our holidays all gone,
Exhilaration with new light –
New school-year starts with dawn.

Once more my mind returns to where
I went this way before –
Not death of dad when I compare –
Like breaking camp once more.

And now as firelight fades at last,
The dark pressed back much less,
Pre--grieving dawn, the night soon passed,
With light will come new zest.

And me? What burden carry I
As we walk to the end?
To make each moment seem to fly
Till on her way we send.

A challenge this – it's easy been
From start of end till now;
I face the challenge – how to win
A different battle now .

I dread this time before she's sent
As memory slowly leaves
Of swallowing, (not just events),
Forgetting how to breathe.

It's not the nicest way to go
This sad Alzheimer's fate;
We pray it will not run full course
All hope for early date.

I guess that is agenda mine,
“Hoved-to” fore coming storm –
Pre-grieve, then face with clearer mind –
Some care to give – been warned.

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