(my Mother) Staying Alive Poem by Janice Windle

1.
When she was thirty-five
my mother said, “I shall be dead
when I am fifty-three
like my mother before me.”
But when she was forty three,
with a new son on her knee
she decided to survive.

2.
When she was sixty-five
my mother had survived
four births,
a miscarriage,
operable tumours
and the interminable boredom of middle age.
She had marched with CND,
learned ceramics
and the Internet
and she was still alive.

3.
When she was sixty-nine
my mother’d kept alive
all three daughters, her son,
tens of cats, scores of mice,
wounded birds and rabbits,
had nursed her two sisters
to their cancerous deaths,
and she was fine.

4.
When she was seventy –five,
living on cheese, Scotch and cigarettes
(not always in that order)
a stroke convulsed my mother’s brain.
Forgetting her death-wish,
she struggled back again,
walked, talked,
bought junk on Ebay
obsessively.
Still alive.

5.
When she was seventy-nine
the nurse said, ”First ward on the right”.
Her pursed lips said it all, I thought.
My mother would be fine.

6.
“There are so many poor old women in here.
The nurses patronise us, they call us “Dear”.
Last night I had to help that lady over there.
I rang, but no-one came.
But I am in such pain.... such pain...”
No, I was wrong,
She wasn’t fine.

7.
When she was eighty and a day
I saw my mother’s body laid
in a dim chapel.
Her face not peaceful as they say
but empty, defeated,
unrecognisable.
“She is so beautiful, so beautiful, ”
my father sobbed.
And howled like a stricken wolf
every morning for a year
because he was still alive.