hobbitatheart5:
So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.
On Thursday last week, my mother received a phone call from her friend, who is the mother of two children who have been in both my older little brother and younger little brother’s classes at school. Her friend was crying, requesting for my mother to pray for her son, since she herself was not religious.
Her son had had a brain hemorrhage.
He was ten years old, very athletic, liked video games (too much), and seemed to be prospering well. One night, he had a headache and collapsed. He had two operations, each six hours long, to glue his vessels back together, but to no avail.
He is now in a vegetative state, and his parents want him to leave peacefully. His time left here is not much now.
I wrote a poem from the mother’s perspective in a wave of overwhelming emotion. It’s quite rubbish poetry, but I needed to express myself in some way, and I can’t draw/sing/write music, so…
Here it is:
TRIBUTE TO JUSTIN
Dear son,
-
I was with you
Waiting to grow old.
But the bomb in your brain
Was waiting to explode,
Within you.
-
See your sister?
She’s too small to know that
Her big brother is close to
Witnessing the light at
The end of the tunnel.
-
I’m sorry my baby,
It’s all my fault.
Me and Daddy made you
A lightning bolt.
Here a second,
-
Gone the next.
Beauty in the nighttime,
Pleasure to the eyes.
Believing it’s fine
Until the thunder strike.
-
What is it like,
The other realm?
Do you see Him
Like Freeman on film?
Only if He’s there. There for you.
-
The dancing silver behind
Your cavernous eyes
Has left me alone
To my agonic cries.
My vein
-
Connects to your vein.
My pain is yours
And yours is mine.
Salt on hospital floors
Cannot resuscitate
-
What once was mine.
-
Tell me are you
Needed up there? Reaper,
I’m at loss as to why
A mother
Can do without a son.
-
Ten years only.
-
My little duckling
Will never be a swan.
On this bed you lie,
While your peers move on.
The world spins too fast
-
For you. A whimsical thorn
Pierces the bush from which it grew,
And the bush who bore the thorn
Lets fall a droplet of dew…
…I wonder, how strong is an umbilical cord?
-
This is what a tree feels
Every winter when its
Leaves say farewell, falling
To the ground– in bits.
Falling, drifting, leaving. Forever.
-
The other mothers they say
“Are you okay, Fanny,
Are you okay?” Other than that
What can I be?
“Okay” encompasses universal emotion!
-
They’re concerned they say,
They cry themselves to sleep,
They say “Fanny we’re here for you,
Here when you weep”,
Or maybe “Thank God it wasn’t me”.
-
The fallen leaves,
They rot in the ground.
From them springs new life
Next year to be found–
Nature’s cyclical suffering.
-
My baby, my blood,
Your pressure throbs in my hand.
My one entreaty to you before
You go on God’s errand:
Please wake for one second,
-
Just for one last goodbye.
-
Love,
Your mother
——————————————
There’s still some hope left that he might pull through, but even so he will never be the same, his brain’s been damaged too badly. I’m just hoping he will be peaceful and revert to God.
Carey Mulligan photographed by Tom Allen for UK Harper’s Bazaar, June 2013
‘Éowyn, Éowyn!’ he cried at last. ‘Éowyn, how come you here? What madness or devilry is this? Death, death, death! Death take us all!’
