Approaching
25th August 2023

I can sense the coils around her (my mother),
they sting by taking her memories,
taking her ability to hold a train of thought,
constantly leaving her stranded mid-sentence,
rotating the loose ends swirl,
spinning ever tighter and tighter,
quicker and quicker,
as skaters do when accelerating their spin in competition,
now having reached a stretched-out blur;
unrelenting they push her,
into disorientation,
and sadness,
and in quiet afternoon moments, tears.

There is not much I,
or she, or anyone else for that matter,
can do in the face of their cruel grip,
other than to try to maintain a connection,
which is proving harder and harder,
…and on the odd occasion you do connect,
it is quickly taken away by the next barb in the coils,
the next yearning to be with her mother, long since dead,
the next yearning to be in her childhood home, long since gone.

It is not lost on me that I have no real line of sight as to where it ends,
where the spinning coils will collide finally with the horizon,
and things will come crashing down,
once and for all;
it will be slow I think,
will involve removal bit by bit,
from the world she knew,
from the family home,
from her friends,
from us, Kandi the dog,
and her possessions, the myriad pieces of life around her built up over so many years,
and in the final approach,
from her personal care, from washing and eating,
things that constitute us at the basest of levels,
I know in my heart …that course is already set,
already …in train.

I am guessing sometime in the future I will reflect on stronger times,
when my mother was the caring loving force beneath the centre of our family,
beneath mine, and my siblings childhoods,
because that is where the value of life lived resides,
there in what felt so light-hearted and easy at the time,
…not here,
amongst the coils,
and the increasingly vacuous moments,
and the increasingly serious connotations,
and quiet …afternoon tears.

Mountain Face,
The Annapurnas,
Nepal