Mother’s Day Poem by Gert Strydom

Mother’s Day



It was mother’s day
and you wanted your dead mother
to be alive again,
more sincerely than anything.

You even were angry with me
for not thinking about you
on that day
of you now being motherless
when you had a mother
for most of your life
and a father too

and that there was something empty,
something missing from your life,
and her being gone
was terrible on that particular day.

That you couldn’t make her breakfast,
pick nasturtiums
from the garden for her,
or even talk to her,
on that special day
and I said that I didn’t realize that you were
missing your mom so much,
and offered my sincere sympathy
and told you that we have to appreciate
our parents
while we still have them,

that life lies only in the hand of God,
that I had grown up without a father
and that my mother was the only parent
whom I really knew
and ironically the only woman
that didn’t leave me in the lurch

which made you angrier,
so much so that you slammed
the phone down in my ear
when I called to apologize
and I wondered why
the persons that we hold dear
leave so much pain
when they are gone
and what had gotten into you?

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Gert Strydom

Gert Strydom

Johannesburg, South Africa
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