Mothers’ Day // A poem by Georgie Tennant

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Pink flowers in a white mug that is placed on a wooden surface

Another fantastic poem has been submitted – Mother’s Day may have passed but Georgie’s poem is raw, beautiful and emotional. 

Mothers’ Day

Last year,
My sister took the early slot,
Taking flowers and chocolates to Mum,
Mid afternoon,
Chatting casually
Over coffee,
A Mothers’ Day like any other.
Her words scrawled in the card,
One of many down the years,
A relic now.
I went later,
With a now-forgotten gift,
For a glass of wine
and child-free conversation,
A luxury.

This year it’s just me.
I can never be enough,
Feel enough, write enough,
Say enough, do enough,
To plug the gaping hole now left,
One we hadn’t even seen coming then,
That ordinary Mothers’ Day last year.

Mothers’ Day looms.
I’ve survived it before,
The times it has threatened to suffocate me,
As a Mother, minus a child,
Taken too soon.
I’ve learned to live with that.

This time round I have a Mother and a child – two, in fact.
But Mothers’ Day threatens to swallow me whole in a different way,
As I face my own Mother,
With one child less and a pain
No gift from me can dull.

And it threatens to swallow me whole
When my niece crawls onto my lap
Motherless,
Adapting, adjusting,
But with parts missing that will never be whole.
I cry as I imagine her,
Surrounded by classmates,
Gluing tissue paper to make-shift bouquets,
Wondering in her six-year old way
If Mummy still sees,
Somewhere out beyond the stars.

Mothers’ Day.
I’ve learned to live with the pain
And the kick-in-the-teeth,
It doles out, once a year,
Learned to count up the blessings as well as the cost.
Countless armies of others join me,
Teeth gritted through Facebook outpourings.
I’m not on my own.

But this year,
Is harder than ever.
I lock my hands for the ride,
in the tightest of grips
As the Mothers’ Day rollercoaster plummets again,
Wondering if anyone will hear my screams.

-Georgie Tennant

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