MY TWO MOTHERS

Just a mere lad of seven when I noticed the change

Your split personality and behaviour so strange

One day the mum that I simply adored

Next day a stranger that struck a different chord

But I still loved you, for you were my mother

All those voices you’d hear going round in your mind

Turned a sweet little lady, so loving and kind

Into someone akin to a Jekyll and Hyde

God alone knows how you felt deep inside

For I couldn’t get through to my mother

Schizophrenia back then was just not understood

You spent months in the confines of old Middlewood

How often I’ve wished I could have turned back the clock

To save you the trauma of the electric shock

For that was no way to treat my dear mother

Most days like the devil, you put us through hell

Yet loving and lovable at the times you were well

But as you grew older, you slowly lost your resolve

Though your alien actions I could always absolve

For after all’s said and done, you’re my mother

The last time I saw you was ’98 Christmas day

To leave you was hard, I wanted so much to stay

When I stooped o’er to kiss you, you looked up and smiled

A spitting image of the mum I’d known as a child

You were one in a million, my mother

Now stood at your grave, I reflect on your life

Such a cocktail of misery, sadness and strife

But the memory I treasure is of your smiling face

And my eyes fill with tears as I kneel down to place

A single rose for a rose, my true mother

Note from the author: If you have taken time to read this poem, it may well leave you feeling that my mum had very little quality of life, in which case it has succeeded in conveying the torment and anguish experienced by a paranoid schizophrenic. When my mum was well, I’d say there was none better; when she was ill there couldn’t be many worse. She evoked a whole range of emotions in those around her; anger, sadness, laughter, desperation, and of course, love. Due to her behavioural patterns, we never took holidays, and seldom went out as a family. These are things which I now regret, not selfishly, but for my mum, as I’ve since moved on to a fuller life, something she was sadly never able to experience. I also regret the fact that I never had the opportunity to know her better as my true mother.