The Daughter That Never Was Poem by Linda Marie Van Tassell

Let me preface this poem by saying it’s true.
Some people will not believe it, and that’s okay.
I can only write it as I was meant to do.
You can choose to believe it or throw it away.

I write this at a time when my mother has passed,
as autumn leaves fall beneath a colorless sky;
and tears, like rain, might as well be a bugle blast
whose song is sailing toward its final good-bye.

I must admit that I don’t know where to begin,
as the beginning is like a rolling ocean.
Some will think me heartless, with the greatest chagrin;
but only I will know the depths of devotion.

My father was like the greatest ghost of glory!
Though he was dead, he somehow remained undying,
and she spun no truth in the web of her story.
How could I have ever known that she was lying?

He was a soldier, with his starry flag on high;
and I idolized him in my little girl mind.
My every breath affirmed, “Father! Here am I! ”
I always wondered how he could leave me behind.

The years and memories shrivel into a scroll.
The past becomes present and present becomes past,
and a deep sorrow resonates within my soul.
I was her worst mistake - a nothing, an outcast.

Neither life nor death ever granted me her love.
I was a little girl with my heart in her hands.
I strived to make her happy: way beyond, above;
but nothing was enough for her unfair demands.

The cooking, the cleaning, getting straight A’s in school:
none of it ever mattered in the palm of her plan.
Her cold-hearted criticism and ridicule
were mine, while she gave her love to some low-life man!

Her anger, her hate, her relentless, beating hand,
her cruelty, and her hurtful words still resound.
When a tree is rooted in a dying tract of land,
how can its young branches with life yet abound?

Eighteen years and nothing! She had no love to give.
I walked away and so we spent the years apart.
Alone and on my own, I found a way to live
despite the drowning in the deep well of my heart.

I found my father’s grave, only to discover
that he was never a brave soldier after all.
She cheated and took his best friend as a lover.
There was no grace to come from such a mortal fall.

Twenty-three years old, and he ended his young life.
In a mangled mass of metal, he closed his eyes;
and his blood was on her hands, his unfaithful wife.
She hid the truth behind her secrets and her lies.

Unmarked and dishonored, his grave was stark and bare.
There was no name to mark his spot of hallowed ground.
Her malice, her hate, and her total lack of care
were like shackles that enclosed my spirit round.

Although no memories of father did I hold,
I marked his grave with his name and angels singing.
My first great achievement! I was nineteen years old
and battle-worn by the brush of tempest’s winging.

No matter that we begged her to take us to his side
to place flowers where he lay his head in rest!
We were his two daughters; and yet, were both denied.
Never once did our shadows slide across his breast.

To make matters worse, as if it could ever be so,
her love-child was given his name, my father’s own.
The deception, the deceit, the wrong and the woe:
it’s a memory that should always walk alone.

How she could take her love-child to my father’s grave!
Dust unto dust, may he forever rest in peace.
I’ll never understand the whispers of the wave
nor these thoughts of mine that will not come to cease.

Uncle Jan cried with joy when I made that first call.
I never expected such a warm reception.
He said he always wondered what happened to us all,
and then he told me of my mother’s deception.

The unanswered calls and the unopened mail –
she denied us a family or even the option.
Our names had been changed; yet, another betrayal!
She lied and said we had been put up for adoption.

It was December 14,1972,
and the white page of dawn was blowing in the wind.
Joel Ray Van Tassell crashed on Fort Avenue.
With a snap of his neck, his life came to its end.

It was October 26,2009,
and Aurora waltzed across the autumnal sky.
A telephone ring, a weeping voice on the line,
and the heart-rending sound of Stephanie in cry.

“Mom stopped breathing, and they are doing CPR.”
The sound of the sirens screamed, “Get out of the way.”
Nothing could prepare; no memories could bar.
There were simply no words and nothing I could say.

Brenda Luck Van Tassell broke her heart without gain.
She composed her fate in a rhapsody of blue,
and she surrendered to the sad staccato strain.
She is buried in Fort Hill Cemetery too.

Her hush and her mystery have drawn to a close
like the beat of her heart and the breath of her lips,
and the thorn is removed from the side of the rose
and the ring of light surrounding nature’s ellipse.

I know that Stephanie will mourn and shed her tears.
She has the pictures, the memories, and the prize.
I have suffered the loss for over forty years
until the tear-tinged twilight shadowed my eyes.

I know that it’s impossible to understand;
and there’s nothing sadder than a soliloquy
from a daughter who was unwanted, unloved, and
who feels as if she were born to never be.

I could not go the funeral on Friday.
Though the reasons are many, it’s mainly because
in her words, I was nothing and a nobody.
Quite simply, I am the daughter that never was.

I grieve alone; I weep alone – too deep, too deep.
I know that others will think me stony hearted;
but I find solace in the arms of sleep, of sleep
when I can dream of those who have now departed.

I will meet you in dreams of what will never be,
and I will drift on the hope of the sleepy waves
and dream that you are dreaming a dream of me
as you lay sleeping in the arms of your graves.