This time, FBF is about loss.
Any loss you can think of is fair game,
but I do ask you to be serious.
I’m looking for the kind of loss
that breaks your heart,
so no jokey light-hearted poems
about lost keys, please.
Please write a NEW poem
written specifically for this challenge. 
Any form is fine except haiku,
and free verse is cool, too.
.

.

.
96 HOURS
.
I try to imagine
almost 16 years
to the day,*
what it would be like
to lay for 96 hours
with no one knowing
you are hurt,
no one checking
to see how you are.
.
The system of checking
on her had broken
down.  My mother
had fallen down a set
of stairs in her split level
house where she lived
alone.
When someone realized
that my mother
hadn’t been heard from
for a few days…
she was found.
.
The odds she would
survive were slim,
but she did.
I can’t remember
when I mentioned,
after thinking how
terrible it must
have been to lay there,
and think…
about ???
.
I can’t remember
when I told her that
I often thought how
terrible
it must have been
to lay there not knowing
what the outcome
would be.
.
My mother told me
that she did not have
a belief in an afterlife…
she did not believe
in heaven or hell.
Just a darkness.
She had discussed it
with a friend who had
had a stroke.
They decided that
death was just darkness.
Nothing afterwards.
She ended the conversation
decisively.
.
We never discussed
that her fall,  religion
or death again…
Then in October 2005
her favorite brother, Bill,
died suddenly.
For her,
an unbearable loss.
.
Three days later,
my mother died,
sitting in her  chair,
waiting for my brother
to visit for the day.
She’d had a shower,
her hair done,
dressed to her liking.
Things important to her, **
She died prepared to go.
.
It is thought that
she died from grief.
The loss of her brother
was too much
for her to bear.
.
Her brother had died.
She’d been angry
when told he died.
He was younger,
she expected him
to out live her.
.
I wonder.
In those 96 hours
in 1997
she decided
death was darkness.
No afterlife.
.
I don’t know the hour
her  brother died.
.
I know that she died
less than 96 hours
after Bill died.
Did she see
light in place of
darkness ?
.
It makes me wonder
if in less than 96 hours
did she change
her mind about
death being darkness
when she decided
to join him.
.
………………………………………………………
*   My mother fell in June 9, 1997.
Today as I write, it is 29 June 2013
** My mother would not go anywhere spur of the moment.
She needed to have a shower, wash, set and dry her hair,
and find an appropriate outfit.
Not for a ride in the car, to the store, anywhere.
My father would get exasperated and say,
“Mary Louise, you are going to need advance notice before
you die so you can have your shower, hair fixed, and dressed
before you die” (paraphrased)

.

.

imaginary garden with real toads

.

Posted by siggiofmaine in Uncategorized Tags: 96 hours not being found, being prepared to die, brother, death, fall, grief, loss