Always thinking of my dear Mum
with forever love... ❤️
Time passes… and what is remembered, lives…
"Let us not look for you only in memory,
Where we would grow lonely without you.
You would want us to find you in presence,
Beside us when beauty brightens,
When kindness glows
And music echoes eternal tones."
~ John O'Donohue
~ Margaret June ~
29-09-1931 ~ 12-01-2022
WHEN A GOOD MOTHER SAILS FROM THIS WORLD
When I say, ‘My mother has died’,
I mean my ‘most beloved’.
Leave me to myself now,
for I am a ship who’s
lost her riggings;
suddenly
come unmoored.
My mother has died;
She has earned her rest now,
waiting only, and proudly so,
for her sails
to be taken down.
I, the daughter,
see to the mending of my mother’s sails;
I seek her
worn and broken
threads of light,
reweaving her dazzling linen.
And though there be broken threads
not able to be rewoven,
I will gently pull the edges together
and stitch one side to the other…
and if not able to be mended,
then I will patch with parts
from my own most earnest life
over the places where my mother’s life
was worn through,
. . . or never was.
Over time, the sails of the mothership
will be fitted to the daughtership;
raised up on the mainsail,
and the final touch –
the red ragged flag – hers –
will be flying topmast of my ship.
I’ll be let down into the waters then,
I, the daughter, will glide again…
but this time, under the best sails
inherited from my mother…
and all the mothers of the motherlines
before her.
Ay, Mother, let me tell you
my treasured dearie-dear,
one last thing I have learned
from your spirit passing through me
as sparkling shadow passes
through darkening shadow,
on this open night-sea journey…
I am learning to navigate
by the mysteries of the farthest stars –
the ones that the great wake of your passing
has revealed to me
for the very first time.
______________
CODA
“When A Good Mother Sails From This World,” is an excerpt from a libretto called Woman. Life. Song. commissioned by Jessye Norman, played by the New York Symphony Orchestra and sung by self-same great mezzo-soprano Miss Norman; musical score by Judith Weir, British composer. The libretto was written by what some have since called, Las Tres Lobas: Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, and
Clarissa Pinkola Estés.
