Are You an Orphan?
28 January 2019
0 Comments
Are your parents gone? Do you feel like an orphan?
A Birthday Mourning
A birthday morning—
an ocean shore, far from home
whitecaps blend
into the mist above
driftwood lies gray upon the sand
relics of places distant, days of yore
A birthday morning—
my first as an orphan,
the woman who bore me gone three years and more
the man who sired me, ashes encrypted
A birthday mourning—
for the two who gave me life
and where am I
under this threatening sky?
Who am I
and when
shall I die?
(Excerpted from The Last Violet: Mourning My Mother, Moving Beyond Regret, copyright 2002 Lois Tschetter Hjelmstad. See "Books" above.)
Are either/both of your parents still alive? Do you treasure them?