Morpethroad

Hi Mum

I cleaned out the old cupboard yesterday

A cupboard where stuff from over the years

Had been had been dumped and much forgotten.

In an old Sunbeam iron box I found all your sympathy cards

Dad had put them away, stored in this box, forgotten

until I pulled the box down and opened it.

He must not have been able to part with them,

So they stayed in this box, safe and secure

These past thirty years.

I’m not so sure he received as many,

You were well known, loved and highly thought of

The cards said it all, the shock of your untimely death.

I looked at each card trying in some cases to remember

The names the people who lived in your life

So many I know are no longer here.

I decided that after all this time and with so many

No longer alive that I would return then to the earth

I thought it would be an act of closure for me.

But it generated so many memories

So many regrets, I never felt I took time to know you

You were in so many ways an enigma to us all.

But I do remember your letters, the one phone call,

The one I made to see how you were

A week before you left me.

You gave me so much I now know of

You imbued in me generosity, charity,

A love of people and family.

I am often so sad thinking about what you have missed

We kids growing up and having our own families

Dad getting to be the beautiful old man he became.

And all these amazing grandkids who have been deprived

Of knowing you, and you them

I know they would have loved their Nanna.

Like me, you would have been so proud of them,

All twelve of them are remarkable people,

So amazing in their own special ways.

And after all these years, your photo still adorns this house

Those photos of the young you, forever smiling back at me

Will stay where they are, as long as I am here.

I can say now I wish I had been a better son

It’s easy in hindsight, to see where I could have been better

That I might have given you more time.

But I have only lovely memories of you

The breakfasts you cooked me, every morning before school

The information you so readily shared

World events, the famous dying, the tennis on the radio

The evenings where you imposed the rosary on me

On my knees night after night, never a reprieve.

And now all these years later, I recall

You cared for me, knew me much better than I did you,

I miss you mum,

I still love you.