She endured the violence, even when I begged, to please, please,
leave the intolerable mess, the brawls with my dad every weekend,
but my mom was afraid and unprepared to be her own person,
I'm sensing few women were ready to take leave in 1967.
Back then, fifty-five years ago on this day of the winter solstice
my mom did leave, as her spirit departed the hospital bed,
while her body yielded to a burst blood vessel forty-eight hours,
after a collapse of her battered and blood-pressured brain.
She lived only fifty years on this earth, worked hard every day,
stayed on with my alcoholic, war-torn dad, my brother, and me,
when clearly, she lived life dangerously whenever dad took a drink, she gambled, lost the bet with that he would change one day.
On this, the anniversary of the longest darkest night, my mother arises again within my heart, gives me strength to begin anew, and like her I’m the proverbial apple falling too close to the tree, yet my mom left behind an important lesson, leave while you still can.
And I did.
~ pe kaplan