We think we know the living, enjoying the
confidence
That they will be around to share their
experiences
And opinions, proving us right or wrong in
our assumptions
Whereas the dead ask only questions:
How much did you really know me?
How much did you understand me?
Do you know the difference between lies and
truth?
How much did you actually need me?
How much did you really love me?
Do you know how much I loved you?
Constance Mary Thompson asks me now
And I wilt under her gaze, as always,
Feeling guilty yet not knowing what I have
done.
She demands answers and I have none.
I knew her as mother of my mother - the root and centre
Of family so firmly planted that I failed
to see our lives
Without her branching tree of distant
brothers and sisters,
Tales of Yorkshire, the War, Western
Australia, nurses and doctors,
Jesse Macpherson Hospital and the
ever-present ghost of her husband,
Phil: an amalgam of experiments with omelets,
Shakespeare and carpentry,
A violin in search of a player, a late-night
never-answered prayer.
His framed photo sat beside her bed, the
smallest of shrines,
A bespectacled face, also asking questions
Perhaps he was a lesson in loss Connie
learned well,
Perhaps it was the legacy of her War
Generation:
We go on because we must, holding the
burden close, suffering in silence.
She seemed to see in me his spirit renewed,
a trace, a mark,
The way I walked, talked, something in the
eyes.
So, unknowingly, I began to share her
burden, becoming a totem, a sign,
That nothing is ever completely lost,
merely transformed,
Becoming a voucher or coupon you can claim
on
If only you could remember where it was
stored.
We all shared her burden by adhering to her
idea of family,
Even if we never truly understood what that
was.
Nevertheless, she defended it with a
determination bordering on ferocity,
Which is not to say she wasn’t giving and
caring, no –
She was loving and caring to a fault and it
showed,
Just so long as you saw that invisible line
she expected to be towed
One memory remains strongest: my younger brother and I
Were in Tennant Creek when we were told Nan was to visit.
We were
so excited we could hardly sleep.
We woke up at some ungodly hour to find she
wasn’t there and so
Returned to bed disappointed, only to wake
later and find she was there,
Like some inexplicable magic trick, she had
appeared from nowhere.
This was a moment of wonder and joy I
thought I would never see again,
Until I saw my daughter born. So you see:
Things are never truly lost, merely
transformed.
Still there are no answers. The questions
linger, disturb our sleep,
Play out in life like the patterns of
choice at the tips of our fingers.
All these words unsaid or words said in
anger, all this unresolved history,
Mislaid plans and misadventure are, as The
Bard said:
“A tale of Sound and Fury, signifying
nothing…”
Perhaps not "nothing", and if something does
remain it must be this:
The pure fact of our existence. I would
not be here if not for her.
A light has gone out but the glow remains,
as it does and must.
Constance Mary Thompson rest in peace.
Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.
©shaun patrick green 2017
