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)