Your Daughter

How painful this emptiness,
this hollowness
not to be recognised
by your mother,
a loving, caring mother.

To see her staring,
with big brown, soulful eyes,
unblinking,
asking, it seems to me,
to do something for her.

Her hands hold on to mine,
tight, warm.
She feels it.
As she does, I hold her tighter,
hoping she loves me,
hoping she remembers me somewhere
in the ebb and flow of her mind.

That sharp, intuitive mind
which once was sharper than a knife
is today a fog
a thick, drifting fog
through which memories
come and go.

Names slip away.
Faces become unfamiliar.
Yesterday dissolves into today,
and sometimes
there is nothing but the fog.

Yet her hands still hold mine.
Tight. Warm.
As though somewhere beneath the fog
they still know me.

Memories flood my mind,
surging, surging, weeping.
Will they overflow?
Can I build a dam to stop them?

Stop
Mind, stop!
I’m drowning in them!

Never again can I do
the things we used to,
like we did before.

Before I knew
you had left me.

Now emptiness is all I feel,
missing you every day.
You were the one person
who meant the world to me.
What will I do without you?
Where will I go?
Only questions.

The answers are clear
an orphan
leading a life, just
a life.

But you come into my dreams,
always smiling, cheerful,
happy, optimistic,
urging me to be the same.
I will, Mom.
I will.
Always,
like you wanted.
I love you.
I love you.
Your daughter.