Waiting for Sunday to come around

We are going to visit my mother on Sunday. She is in a home over a hundred miles from where we live and it is getting harder and harder to visit her as dementia is eating her memory away. She cannot remember my name but still recognises me; every time we visit I am greeted by a beaming smile as she cries, ‘It’s you! I thought I would never see you again.’ This is how I imagine it must be for her.

PS After I wrote this I couldn’t stop the tears.

Forgetting to Live

It’s morning

Squiggles of silvery trails

Lead to rainy night snails

She’s lost the thread

Of something in her head

Looks out of the window

At a bird flying by

A monogram in the sky

To remind her

Of something she’s forgotten

A queasy feeling

Of standing on an empty stage

It happens at her age

She forgets the next line

Misses a cue

Not knowing what to do

She watches the hands of the clock

Move slowly round its face

In an ever faster race

To mark off the seconds

Minutes

Hours

Of the rest of her life

In an old photograph