My Mother's Flowers

My Mother and Me

 My Mother’s Flowers

Every Memorial Day weekend we journeyed to the greenhouse

to pick out flats of petunias, geraniums, and marigolds 

to plant around our home and also for the gravestones

of the two cemeteries where my parents’ deceased were buried.

Stooping over the soil with her shovel, hand digging holes,

Mother artfully arranged geraniums, marigolds, and petunias

and an occasional coleus in her front yard flower beds.

As a child, I often found my mother standing with her garden hose,

watering her flowers before the rise of the strong morning sun.

I knew not to disturb her then, as this was her time.

Time passed. My mother could no longer care for flowerbeds. 

Her eyesight dimmed year after year, blindness was inevitable.

Instead she planted flowers in large pots on the front porch.

It was important for her to grow flowers.

Then one day when my mother was almost blind

she awoke to find her flower pots stolen.

Gone were the plants that had been her pride,

the only reminder of her gardens of yesteryear.

The thieves stole more than flowers from my mother,

they stole her desire to grow them.  She never had flowers again.

They had been all that was left for her to nurture.

Nothing more to care for is a very sad thing.

Monday is Memorial Day in this country.  I am sharing a poem that involves a family Memorial Day tradition---at least at the beginning of the poem.  It is not a new poem, but I don't have the heart to write a new Memorial Day poem this year.  I do like this one AND the picture.  Smiles.

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