I never really wrote a poem before so, i tried my best.

Its called “Rusty”

Hey mom its me David rember me? This is the third time this week she has met her son. She sits there and stares blankly behind a smiling mask. She chuckles at something only she knows about. She stops soon after as if nothing ever happened. With a sigh and a blink that small wave of memory came and went. He tells her about his day…about the kids and the family as he has done for years now. She mutters something about leaving the biscuts in the oven. He looks at her; her eyes staring back at her. She’s a prisoner in her own mind..just a shell of a woman I knew. She’s mearly a dot in a sea of empty eyes and blank stares. She has no idea who anyone is. She is content only because this what was familar to her these last few years.

  There are some days when her face comes back, when her eyes remember. Sometimes she says his name but most of the time she doesn’t say a word— you just know, you feel like a child again under her watchful eyes. All the things you can’t say for fear of her getting upset or simply just not understang are somehow known to her. But soon it all goes away as quickly as it came. This diesease has trapped her so deep inside the core of her being..where some where is still her spirit living the way she use to.

  I look into her eyes all the time hoping to find something that’s still there because they say its the windows to the soul. When ever I get to see her I feel so happy. I got used to swallowing that bittersweet pill than manages to always find a way to get stuck in the back of my throat, which sometimes makes me choke on words I wish to say because I know full well she won’t understand. But I never did get used to the way it made the pit of my stomach feel; reality sinking the ships of my exspectations then spreading to my heart; laceing its claws around it with a death grip, just to remind me how foolish it is to even think she’ll remember me. I sit there and watch as the memories secrete through her pores. I watch her movesments like clock work; same way as when I was only a child. I watch her eyes, same as mine, but saw and experienced things way beyond my years.

  Every part of her body screams stories of the past. How her hair is now;thin and fragile as tissue paper only reminds me of the thick bushy mane that used to sit on top of her head like a crown. Her hands how they used to cradle mines..how she would take them to her lips and kiss them everytime she saw me. Nowadays, I do the same to her just to see if she’ll have a reaction— she doesn’t. She just smiles politely and thanks me. It doesn’t upset me anymore.I’m used to it.  

At times I like to fantasize about what would happen if she got her memory back for day. What would I do?  Would I tell her about all the ugly family secrets that have been brewing right in front of her after all these years? Do I present my broken family to her? Should show her how this disease made her children enemies? How do I explain the scars on the back of our family’s legacy? The losened, caloused grip that is supposed to keep us together but instead takes the easy way out and just seperates us? Not only does it affect her, it reaches over and affects us as well. to the point that we’ve mearely became a product of our own detruction. ” what grandma doesn’t know won’t hurt her”is acctually put into perpective. So do I make her aware of all this? No. Because just as this diesease can tear a family to shreads it can bring them together as well. even if hell is visited a few times.  I’d rather show her life…show her the results of her hard work…show her what her hands did..show her what her words made..where her heart touched…where her blood runs. I’ll show her the children she left behind in exchange for strong adults…i ‘ll show her wided eye little ones she never met, whose voices are laced with her soul…they don’t know their great grandmother was a rolling stone, they’ll be built like it just like everyone else.  I will present her sons to her; on the cusp of their golden years…mirroring images…each with their own story, but all in the same.  I will watch as their souls fit together like puzzle pieces, and memories travel between each person like synapes.

  By now… all I see is a mother and her young sons..and I am reminded of a simpler time before alzheimers..before children..before marriage..before “life” happened, it was just them.  And when the day draws near the end…we will still be there for as long as we can, to hold her hand and  watch her eyes because although she’s trapped she is still in there looking back at us through those looking glass eyes…being thankful for us always remembering her…when she forgets who we are.          

-Aaqilah.