Holiday Season - Cut To The Bone

A writer friend of mine did a podcast a couple years ago where he challenged his writer-subscribers to create a Christmas poem to someone - but not just any sort of sweet Holiday drivel, but a poem that cut-to-the-bone and made you bleed. This is not an easy assignment. I suspect we all have Holiday memories of moments that were so painful just thinking of them makes the heart spasm and the eyes well up.

So who would my poem target? Who would I write to if I could?

I would write to my mother. I would write to my grandmother. Two poems. Very separate and very different, and yet companion pieces. Just thinking of that challenge has tears running down my face.

MOTHER:

Christmas was your favorite holiday.

The Season ignited your creativity in a blazing furry.

What cruel irony that your last moments of consciousness were of decorating the Tree.

GRANDMOTHER:

You never understood her reason for leaving

Leaving when the tree was only half decorated

Your mind shut down

The blood trailing from living room through dining room, leading to her deathbed

Your mind shut down

"She's Not Feeling Well"

"She won't talk to me"

Those were the things you told me when I called

Because - Your mind shut down

What horrors did you endure as a child that caused this?

This shutting down at the first hint of emergency?

Your mind shut down

So you didn't have to really experience that horror, that pain

You didn't have to see your daughter crawling room-to-room hemorrhaging blood

Your mind shut down

It was too much for the child within you,

The child that you were when the first horror happened

The first horror when no one came to your rescue

When no one saved you

When no one protected you

So...

Your mind shut down

Your mind did its best to protect you

But I did not

I did not understand what you needed

I was angry

I was hurt

Did my heart shut down?

Maybe

In my old age I now understand

You were Lonely

You were so deeply wounded that you had no recourse, no resource

I did not understand

I did not protect you

My mother was gone when she could have been saved

You could have saved her

But you couldn't see her

Worse, you couldn't save yourself

And no one Saw you

No one saw your Pain

No one saw your wounds hemorrhaging in agony

Silently, inside where everything you endured was hidden away

At Christmas time my shame is that I didn't See