It could have been Tuesday
Or Thursday
The days all seemed the same
Maybe it’ll happen tonight
Or maybe tomorrow
A painful waiting game
But I knew it was coming
Or was it going
Only time can know
Why did I need to watch it
Or worse, live it
See the cancer grow
Cancer is an arrogant shit
Stepping on hearts with depravity
But I remember you you shit
That very night it took my Mom
Cancer spun and waltzed to the ballroom floor
In an ugly miasmic dance with death
Teasing and taunting
Till we could take it no more
Dispassionate
Sucking up all her breath
She didn’t even know she was at home
Thought she was alone
Didn’t know how much I cared
Cancer took her brain away
Left her lonely and scared
With vile indifference
Some unfamiliar eyes looked my way
Like they had something important to say
But it wasn’t mom who was staring
The eyes were too angry
Then in my Moms deaths voice to taunt me
“Who are you? Why are you here? I don’t know you”
“It’s me Mom, your prodigal son. I’ve come back home.”
“You’re not my son, I’ve never seen you before in my life”
The anger in her eyes was vaguely familiar
At the same time completely foreign
Still they cut like a razor through my soul
Bleeding out the shame of virtues past
Burning a hole in my confidence
It wasn’t her it wasn’t her
It was the Cancer talking
Leaving me wounded
One final indignity
To taunt my reflection
Cancer cares for no one

Memories are like watching reruns of our lives. Many make us smile, swell with pride and feel the comfort and warmth of an epoch of our younger days. Sometimes they bring on a state of melancholy leaving us yearning for those days while others make us outright sad and depressed, especially when the memory is of something ripped from our hearts. They come as an ending, a final memory, the last episode. This is inspired from my final memory of my Mom who passed from cancer many years ago. I left home when I thought I had become a man to become an adult on my own terms which intensified the already established rift between my mother and I. Fortunately mere months before she was diagnosed with cancer we had come to understand and appreciate each other and our relationship had returned to a strong mother /son bond. On the downside, this made the end so much harder…