My Mother was a wonderful - but rather unique lady. Few really understood her but her story deserves to be told! - For she IS "the Misty Lady".

MISTY LADY


(For my mother who at age 9 contracted rheumatic
fever and suffered total and permanent amnesia, and who now suffers Altzheimers.)

There was a time you went away
To a place no one could find,
And I've often wondered when you returned,
How much of you you left behind.

I wish I could have known you
Before you went away,
Then perhaps I might have known
How much of you I lost that day.

Forty odd years I have known you now,
Yet part of you I'll never know.
You never knew how much I cursed
That inner fire that robbed you so.

But sometimes in the mist of your eye
I glimpse a lady sad and serene.
Looking far beyond us now,
To vistas of what might have been.

Have you looked out all these years,
And watched your family grow?
A part of us forever apart,
Dreaming of a day it would not be so.

Have you aged as we have aged,
Veiled only by the misty fold?
Or are you in a timeless place,
A child forever nine years old?

I am fully grown now
And have a family of my own,
And perhaps one day I'll tell them of
Their other Gran they've never known.

But I'll always ponder my two mums,
How two lives in one life lie.
The mum I've always known and loved
And the misty lady in her eye.

And though I've never known her
I have seen her oft in misty eye,
And think that I would rather like
To meet her one day bye and bye.

But the mist rolls steadily forward now,
Reclaiming that it could not hold.
But maybe someday we'll catch them both
Out there beyond the misty fold.

D.J. Ludlow  1999

(In November 2001 the Misty Lady was finally reclaimed by the mist that shrouded the beginning and ending of her life. Because of my disability I could not attend her funeral.


This is my epitaph to her!)


THE STEPS ON THE SHORES OF MY HEART



Did you notice today
The World get a little smaller?
But our loss is Heaven's gain
And for her I'll stand a little taller.

Ashes to ashes and dust to dust,
Was not for this misty maid.
From mist she came and to mist returned,
Experiencing neither the womb nor the grave.

In depths by the World unfathomed
Her spirit strove to bring love and "do good".
Many battles by the World unseen
Fought and won though few understood.

But this passing spirit of love
Left her footprints in the sand,
And on the beaches of my mind
Through the wind and the tide they stand.

For apron strings must eventually untie,
And hands must all too soon part.
But a mother's love forever treads softly,
On the shores of a loving son's heart.

D.J. Ludlow Copyright Nov, 2001