I still see the look in my mother’s dark eyes, decades ago, when I told her a decision I had made, one that would cause the people I most love to suffer. She reached for my hands. It will be okay, she said. Everything will be okay. And that gave me strength. Many years later she told me she hadn’t known at all that it would be okay, but I knew I had to tell you that.
Last week it was my turn to tell my mother, my lifelong love, that it would be okay. That in her absence we would take care of each other, that we would go on and be happy. I did not tell her my heart was broken, because she would have worried. It would have distracted her from the profound work of dying. She needed to be free.
Before she entirely lost her words, she leaned her head on my arm in the middle of the night and kissed it. Do you feel like you’re my mother now? she murmured. I do, I answered. Well, you’re a very nice mother, she said, and she smiled like a little girl.
Good Night, by W.S. Merwin
Sleep softly my old love
my beauty in the dark
night is a dream we have
as you know as you know
night is a dream you know
an old love in the dark
around you as you go
without end as you know
in the night where you go
sleep softly my old love
without end in the dark
in the love that you know
Click here for more information about W.S. Merwin. Today’s poem is from his collection The Shadow of Sirius and was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2008.
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Alison McGhee 
This poem means so much to me. Though my 96 year old mother is not quite there yet she is getting closer and closer. I loved what you wrote and what Merlin wrote. I am not always able to just cry since I’m caught up in caring for her. Your post helped me cry today.
Maddy Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone
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Dear, dear Maddy, I understand this so deeply. I’m sending love and strength.
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I am so sorry for your loss. Your mother sounds like a wonderful and remarkable woman.
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I am so sorry for your loss. Your mother sounds like a wonderful and remarkable woman.
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Thank you, Yvonne. She really was. I was lucky to have her as long as I did, and grateful to have seen her through to the other side.
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Your message/comments and poem of the week has me in tears
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Love you, sister. I wish you had had this chance with your mother.
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