Missing Mom on Mother's Day

    It's Mother's Day and though I planned to post on Socratic discussions today, I find that all things considered, I'm still a human being with a full range of emotions and the simple inability to accomplish certain tasks from time to time.

    And so instead of posting on discussions and student involvement, I'm going to post two simple poems, one I wrote for my mother last May, who died on October 9, 2004, and one for my grandmother, Dido, who passed away a year ago on May 9th.

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The first is for my mom, Delissa Irene:

This is just to say

I have renovated
the kitchen
and hung the pictures
and decorated the home

that you have never known.

Forgive me
for still mourning
your absence.

You'd like it here--

so quiet
and so calm.

And another poem, for my grandma, Ida O'Dell:

The Message

He called me just to say
that she had passed away.
I knew the moment I saw the message.
He never calls.
He never leaves messages.

His voice was kind.
His words were tender.
He didn't seem raw around the edges
in the way that I perpetually live these days.
He was steady and sure--
and said with assurance that we all
including grandma
had done the best we could.

And now I sit here in the dark
listening to the nighttime summer sounds,
hearing the crickets and the occasional bark,
listening to the dark on this Sunday evening,
thinking of how I am no no one's
Little One--
how I'm now supposed to be big.
Secure and sure and as steady as
the giant rising of the full moon
as it makes its way closer to earth than
ever before.

I wonder if Dido caught a ride on it,
if she's getting to see the world from afar,
if she's finally back with her loved one
whom she never really left
while she was trapped here waiting.

I imagine him holding her at last,
his strong arms around her fragile, frail frame.

I wonder if she dreamed of him
in those final moments
as she made her journey alone.
I wonder if she can see her Little One now
examining the man in the moon
to find traces of her shadow.

Good night, Moon.
Good night, Mama.

Good night, WA-- I can't call you Grandpa.
We missed the chance to know each other
like that. Maybe we'll know each other one day.

Good night, Grandma.
May you find peace and get the chance to rest.
The rest of us will miss you down here.

It's a strange feeling to be a woman on Mother's Day, and to have neither any living motherly relatives nor any children of one's own. And yet it's still a chance to celebrate. And to remember. Here's to all of the mothers everywhere, and to the lasting impact that they leave on the world.