Alice Maud Taber OR Remembering My Mother

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

[Update: 22nd March 2020] Today is Mothers' Day, and likely to prove very upsetting for many people. The COVID 19 coronavirus pandemic continues to spread and take its toll on the vulnerable and elderly in societies worldwide. While social distancing is necessary to help slow the spread of the virus sufficiently to help medical and emergency services teams to cope, not visiting Mum today of all days won't be easy.]RT 

My mother was one of the least judgemental people I have ever known and would have applauded transgender men and women for finding the moral courage to be true to themselves and look the world in the eye. (Far too many people worldwide rush to judgement without giving a second thought to how it must feel to live in a body that cannot truly relate to the gender assigned to it.

It is some years since my mother died on June 2nd 1976. [She was born 100+ years ago on July 16 1916; a hundred years to the day, a friend came to lunch and we toasted her over a glass of Baileys Irish Cream Liqueur.]

She was a remarkable woman, my Mum. She would talk to anyone and anyone would talk to her regardless of any artificial class barriers. Above all, she was a very understanding and forgiving person, traits of human nature that - in my experience - rarely go hand in hand in people and which, sadly, are anything but common in my own family. (I like to think I am a very understanding person, but struggle with forgiveness although I usually get there in the end.)

Throughout my childhood, my mother would often tell me story poems instead of a traditional story at bedtime. (She could recite 'The Highwayman' (Noyes) and 'The Ancient Mariner  ' (Coleridge) by heart!) Even as a young man, I used to love to hear her reciting poetry.

We cannot celebrate death, but celebrating a person much loved and a life well lived is always a privilege.

   

My mother at 21 (1937)

My mother at the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, 1971

ALICE MAUD TABER or REMEMBERING MY MOTHER

         (1916-1976)

Always there for me, believing in me

more than I believed in myself, knowing me

better than I knew myself,

loving me more than I loved myself

although I could never  give you

what you wanted, be what you wanted,

live or love how you wanted...

subscribe to your fantasy of family unity;

we did our best by each other, assisting

one another through life’s maze of emotional

twists, turns, and dead-ends; me, unable

to grasp for years how conflicting loyalties

were tearing you apart...

Yours, a divided heart never truly made whole;

we whose demands you loved to meet

always failing it. Yet, even now, years on

since a tumour took its toll, you are (still)

one to whom this poet turns, always striving

for some peace of mind, heart, and soul

(imagination’s impossible goal) - learning 

to read between lines to which you gave

life and meaning. Only, then I wasn’t listening

(youth thinks it knows everything.)

Copyright R. N. Taber 2005; 2011

[Note: This poem has been slightly revised from the original version that appears as the dedication poem in A Feeling for the Quickness of Time by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2005.]