This Mother

 

 

This mother lived

until she was ninety-four.

Her married parents journeyed from Poland

when they were seventeen on a boat

to Chicago, later moving to Canada.

Her father worked in a shoe factory.

He had a sister who stayed in Poland and

was taken during the war to a Russian gulag.

I never met her father. From what I was told,

he was a harsh man, a violent man who threw

cutlery on the floor if the table wasn’t set right,

if his wife dared to complain.

 

This mother’s mother was a Catholic,

she had 19 children. Some died before

they turned one, one died when he was three.

 

This mother almost died too when she was young

of diphtheria. The doctor told her father to let

her die as they had too many children, but he refused.

 

This mother lost her older brother when he was 21.

It was his last mission before he came home.

It was World War II and he was a pilot who went

missing in action. This mother said his name was Paul,

and she never stopped thinking of him, even though

she had many other brothers and sisters – a whole

brood of tightly knit siblings who got together throughout

the year, every year, singing and laughing and having

a genuine good time with very little resentments

between any of them. When they were younger,

this mother and all her siblings legally changed

their last name from its Polish origins

to a more palatable easy-to-pronounce one,

so they could get jobs and be taken seriously.

 

This mother grew up in a house, sharing

one bedroom with her many sisters. That house

was haunted. I know because I lived there for a time –

there were dark grey entities under the floorboards,

in the old bathroom and in every bedroom, hovering like fog.

 

This mother knew extreme poverty

as child. It was the Great Depression and there

were so many mouths to feed with very little money.

One time, this mother lost a can of beans, coming

home from the corner store, rolling it down a street hill,

it fell into a sewer. She was so afraid to go home,

she ran away, for a short time.

 

This mother was a journalist, she went to Europe

as a young women, and when she came home,

after studying fashion design, she worked for

a newspaper. She wrote about celebrities,

and met many celebrities, but most treasured

and important to her was befriending Marilyn Monroe

for a summer when she worked at Jasper.

She had many pictures of them together but they were stolen,

save for one, which she carried with her in her wallet

until she died, eager to show whoever she met.

 

This mother also wrote about strange people, psychics

who would visit us and spoke to cats, and astral planed

to other planets. One claimed to be a descendant of the

true Count Dracula, sharing his blood condition.

 

This mother wasn’t a great mother at first. At the time

she had me she was 36. She was always kind, but inattentive.

Her friends would say – “I can’t imagine you as a mother.”

As she loved to drink, to go to parties, socialize day and night,

dancing on tables – her feet hanging and swinging

out the car window on the way home.

 

This mother later became a great mother.

Even when I lived away from her home,

she would pick me up at the station with my

30-pound sculptures and drive to me to my classes

to the cabin tucked away in the woods.

 

Before I left home, when I was 14 and 15,

I wrote short stories and I would call her at her work

and read them to her. She listened and applauded and hardly

ever criticized. Later when I started writing poetry,

she told me to write romance novels for money

and save the poetry as a hobby.

 

This mother lost her husband when she was sixty-six.

She spiraled for years, surrounding herself with alcoholics,

people who used her and distracted her from her grief.

 

This mother grew out of that, finding something

again to live for when she became grandmother.

She was full of adventure and play,

enlivening the atmosphere with her very breath,

loving and vivacious, and so happy

to have grandchildren. Her grandchildren,

my children, eagerly anticipated and celebrated her

weekly arrivals, they danced around and watched

out the window, waiting for her car to pull in.

And when they got older, they remained close,

playing games, playing cards,

debating, painting nails and watching videos.

 

This mother told my brother and I

that she would share martinis with our long-dead father

on her balcony, and they would talk for hours

about their mutual past. She also wrote him letters.

 

This mother was such a wonderful mother

and friend. We talked every day on the phone, often twice.

We sometimes cried and argued, but always told

each other how much we loved each other.

She was compassionate and forever helping.

She was very spiritual. She loved God and Jesus,

as she strove to learn and love the true Jesus,

not the one of her upbringing.

Everyone loved her and would vie for her attention.

Before she got sick, she lived on her own

in a large apartment with a glorious view.

She went out every day, and when she wasn’t out,

she was on the phone. She never got depressed

or bitter or slowed down, but had energy

unheard of for one her age. She thoroughly enjoyed

her rich and varied blessings.

 

By the time the cancer hit she was 93.

She was not the youngest, but the last to go

of her siblings. One time, when she was sick

and on morphine, she said something horrible to me.

And though she was sick and though it was hard,

I confronted her and told her how it hurt.

She couldn’t even believe she said it, and there,

she turned, holding both of my hands in both of hers,

the whites turning red around their turquoise centres,

she said to me – “Don’t you know how much I love you?

You are my whole world.”

 

This mother was my mother.

It’s been more than two years since she

left. I was alone with her when she died,

and I saw her welcomed home.

 

This mother was like a large cut diamond,

child-like, sparkling, bold. She was determined

and always ready for action.

She is gone but that is just an illusion.

She is here in the hummingbird

visiting on our deck, in her voice

still strong in my ears,

and in the love she gave,

knitting my family a touchstone

sustaining core.

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Copyright © by Allison Grayhurst 2026

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

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First published in “Synchronized Chaos” October 2026

https://synchchaos.com/poetry-from-allison-grayhurst-18/

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You can listen to the poem below:

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