Dementia
My mother forgot how to swallow.
Before that, she lost my face and my name,
erased from her memory by sickness and age.
Her nurses complained she took too long to feed
They wanted a peg and a tube for the deed
My mother forgot how to swallow
She forgot her late spouse, disremembered her vow.
With the loss of the past there is no here and now.
Once she read to my child, then my girl read to her-
Until all the sounds were a meaningless blur
My mother forgot how to swallow
Jesus and Mary and her patron saint
would loved to have helped her, so weak and so faint,
but she had forgotten the simplest prayer -
the beads in her hand little use to her here.
My mother forgot how to swallow
The night nurses found her while making their round
She was cold to the touch, no pulse to be found
She stared, eyes wide open, at the cross on the wall
Perhaps the Messiah had come after all.
poem by John F. McCullagh
Added by Poetry Lover
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