The Poem

For friends coming here from my facebook page, this is the poem in its original form as submitted and judged for the NJ Wordsmith Competition.  It has gone through many iterations and I still don't consider it "finished".  The first change was a title change when I completed the digital art for a mixed media project.  You can see it as the photo under the original.  I also made some format changes when I included it here.  Not sure of the next leg on this particular journey BUT...  I know it ain't done.  Thanks for checking it out.   By the way, if you've appeared here from somewhere else.  I hope you enjoy it.

The Long Journey Home

I watched her forget--

at first they were just “little” things

keys...directions...dates...times...commitments...

“That’s no big deal”, I would say

“That happens to us all”, I would say

“You just have a lot on your mind, you’re tired”, I would say

Then the forgotten things 

became not such “little” things

like when the call came from store security that she had been wandering through the parking garage 

for hours 

she couldn’t find her car...she couldn’t remember what it looked like...
please...come for her

like when my father called to ask me to go find her

after she had been gone all day...
leaving early that morning to take a friend to the store 

I found her in her beloved red corolla...puttering ever so slowly... down the middle of the street...

I followed her home.

I took her keys.

I watched her forget that filters were important especially in public places

that elevators are close quarters and you don’t have to comment on the odor of the people standing next to you...no matter how offensive 

that clothes are necessary when leaving the house

that the living room was not the bathroom...
that chairs were not toilets.

Then it was her name...and then my name

I watched her forget that there were people who loved her

And when she forgot my place in this world...I too struggled to find my place

I tried to make a place for us

Some place that would be familiar to her...Some place where I could still be beside her

Like in the kitchen baking sweet smelling rolls like she used to do for holidays using her mother’s recipe...or at the piano where her father had taught her to play

But she had forgotten how to do all of these things

And I had never learned.

In the end she had even forgotten how to speak...
not how to to tell me how she hated me touching her...
not to use her sharp and stringent tongue to let me know that she hated me bathing her, changing her...
because I was the one who had taken away her keys.  
I was the one who uncovered the “secret”.

In the end I would spray her bed linens with lavender... something that I had read somewhere was relaxing... each night I prayed that the lavender would calm and bring her enough peace to sleep for the night, 

I would lift her lifeless and burden filled body from her wheel chair and lay her on her side of the bed I would lay there next to her...until it was too painful to watch her cry... 

soundlessly...motionlessly

I would wipe her face..Tell her I loved her...and leave...for the night.

Of the end, I can only say there was something in me that was glad it was the end

But then endings only transform themselves into beginnings

for another ending...

“It's no big deal” she says.

“That happens to all of us”, she says.

“You just have a lot on your mind, you’re just tired”, she says.

And as SHE now speaks ME...   

to ME 

my heart cries.

click on image to enlarge

While you're here...  Can make a plug for a contribution to my American Cancer Relay for Life page?  No amount is too small.