When a Good Mother Sails from This World...

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

Mum and daughter Rainie enjoying happy holidays

 with family at the Sandgate Pool in Queensland

which my Grandad helped to build.

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.