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AI-generated graphic by NightCafé for The New Verse News. |
For the country’s 250th birthday celebration
my sister texts a collage of photos of our mother
in her last years before dying at 100.
At first it seems a strange birthday message
for the nation, until I start looking at the photos.
In my mother’s face, her seated posture,
often holding flowers or her cat on her lap,
I see the inevitable wear of years, time’s destruction,
a loss of elasticity and nimbleness,
a loss of focus, purpose and endless energy,
a loss of fitting in to how things work and get done.
Yet in her eyes and smile in photo after photo,
I see acceptance and memories of past joys
and loves, her ocean sailings, mountain climbs,
her shore walks, and dance among multitudes.
I see a hint of denial, pretending that her place
in the family of things is not coming to an end,
only her eyes betraying her knowledge
that the journey has already started.
Her face tells me all this, but also tells me
that amid her brokenness and joys and losses,
ever courageous, she is finding new love
and meaning in this, her season of endings.
With no flowers for you, let me still say,
Happy Birthday America.
Chris Reed cared for her mother in her last two years of life and found beauty in her mother's decline in health and purpose. Finishing Line Press recently published a chapbook of Reed's poems about this time, Two Years and Two Months.
