Wake up, it's Christmas mourn
Those loved have long since gone
The stockings are hung but who cares
preserved for those no longer there
six feet beneath me sleep
Black lights hang from the tree
accents of dead holly
Whoa mistletoe
(It's growing cold)
I'm seeing ghosts
(I'm drinking old)
Red water...

She died on a Christmas morning. Her life, all that she had done and been melted away with her. She left no legacy, no songs were sung for her, few even remember she ever existed. She had been the mother to 9 children, that's about all that I really know about her. When she died, all that she had been the beginning and center of melted away with her. The family she had loved, cared for and worked to build and maintain for so many years simply fell apart. Her death was treated like it had been just another dirty family secret, mysterious and never spoken of unless under pressure, even then just enough to satisfy the curious with curt answers.

Within months, the man who'd loved and married her had lost the better half of his sanity. Pursuing activities that at the time were so unthinkable that no one talked about them, he just simply left the children's lives one day. The older children scattered, some got married, others pursued life on their own. The younger children were farmed out, some to a boys home , others to family, and yet others simply disappeared. It was not until many years later did the children find out the fate of the rest of their family members and even longer till they met again. That is the one's that were still alive and not institutionalized.

Since I know almost nothing of her I try to imagine what her life must have been like. I have to guess she was maybe in her forties when she passed. By doing some creative math, making assumptions for the equation, I'd say she was born right around the turn of the century in the early 1900's perhaps. This means she lived through the first world war, the pandemic of 1918, the great depression and the dust bowl era. Life for her could only have been good to her for brief periods of time, if at all. Women's rights were unheard of, it was her place to mind her husband, stay home, have babies and keep her household fed and cleaned, without the modern conveniences afforded our generations since. I like to think she felt loved and appreciated but I can't bring myself to actually feel that she did. Her's was a life of hardship, with little joy to be found. My feelings are that whatever sickness it was that snuffed out her life was not the great tragedy of her life, but rather was the release from a life suffering and sadness.

If I leave here tomorrow
Would you still remember me?
For I must be traveling on now
'Cause there's too many places I've got to see
But if I stay here with you girl
Things just couldn't be the same
'Cause I'm as free as a bird now
And this bird you cannot change

this was a nodeshell that needed filling and I had something to say...

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