'A Plea'

My mother's second entry in her writing group's publication in the summer of 1992 - see earlier post here - was a poem, 'The Plea'. It's many years since I last read it and, when I did, I found myself both moved and left with a feeling of guilt. 

                        How can I tell what thoughts I have of you

                        Now days slip by to months and years alone?

                        What did you think your ageing wife would do

                        When faced with empty days? I must not moan

                        But try to face the world with cheerful mien

                        And do, as always, what I can to ease

                        The burdens of the old, not often seen

                        By hurrying young ones. "Why, their troubles cease,

                        They have their pension - what more do they need?"

                        A kindly thought, a cheerful word no less

                        Cash is not all, it helps, was earned indeed.

                        Do try to see the thought they can't confess

                        Life is not done, they have so much to give.

                        Not cabbages: old men and women live!

It's an intensely personal poem. She was ten years younger than my father - picture was taken a fortnight after my father died - and generally much healthier than he, so she must have known that she would spend many years at the end of her life alone. That she filled her time with care for the elderly was very true. After returning to Hastings shortly before we emigrated to Scotland, she regularly visited several 'old people', some younger than her.

The part I find most difficult is her appeal to those younger to give more thought to the elderly. I have a horrible feeling that this is, at least in part, a reference to me, for in the last years of my father's life, and in the years before my mother moved back to Hastings, I spent far too many hours on school and union work, and far too little time with my family.