Amongst family she stands 
in her old familiar little way
A grandmother with so many aches and pains
a grandmother I'm so sad just to say 
I really don't know

She complains 
she's hardly ever satisfied
I do think she's feeling very sad
For the tremendous need of hers
just to be pampered ... to be noticed

She must be awful lonely 
this grandmother of mine
for she lives so alone
her children spread so far and wide

Yesterday was the very first time
I've ever witnessed a tear 
in which she had shed
in all of my twenty-three years

The saddest thing of all in life
was her need to hide 
that river of tears
that took her by
from someone who really does care

Oh dear grandmother
that little shed of tears
is no such sin for you or I

It was after sharing her deepest feelings
that she asked me 
"would you write a poem for me
and send it to my children"

In her in-and-about way
I knew what she was really asking

So I took the tears in her eyes
the sadness in her whisper
and these are the words
she silently confessed ...

"Little children you've grown up so very fast
It's almost a sin the way life punishes us
For life just passed me by 
and my days are almost impossible to fill

My little ones are no longer here to hold
No rumble of laughter to be told
No one to pick up when feeling sad and low

A lot of my time is filled with the silence
So much time just for thoughts
Of how everyone became so far and distant
Just where did it all go so very wrong

That far away lifetime at Low Bush
and to think all those million of times
we almost didn't survive
but somehow God pulled us through
and we did manage to make it

Today, the family I borne
has no bond whatsoever
For why is it 
we always hurt the ones we love?

Today, 
I do know that I wasted a lifetime
in not saying
"How I do love you
each and everyone"

Two daughters, five sons
God!  How I've been so deeply blessed

Believe it if you wish
all of you children were and are
my memories of yesteryear

The thoughts in my lonely empty days
you're the reason a smile passes me by
in the silence of time

You bring your mama such fine tears
you give me laughter
you gave me hope to carry on

In my gentlest cry I ask of you

Little children the ones
I foolishly done so very wrong
I beg with open heart 
let go of the past
For it has left us 
it can not be taken back
I've got today ...
and hoping for a new tomorrow

It is now I ask my children 
let's gather about till 
the fair light burns down low
Let's us speak of the good 
and let go of the bad
Let the tears finally rest
'cause this heartache I carry
will be gone ...
When my children 
are all home by my side"

And those are the tears in her eyes
that your mama cried late last night!




Written one cold winter night ... 
12 February 1988

(This poem really affected me ... cause I wrote it for my Grandmother
but never knew she only had a few months to live,
I felt so bad cause I never mailed it to her children like she asked
the night before she died she called me to come see her
I never thought in a million years she was saying Goodbye to me
till the next day when I got the call she had died
and it was then in front of her casket
that I read her heartache to her family)



© Donna Graham
(Granddaughter of Rita Denault)