Poetry
A Mother’s Prayer For A Lost Daughter
The Price Of Parental Love
What price our sons will exceed their father’s aspirations?
And if they do, is it for him — when they surpass those
incomparable limits of fatherhood?
What price our daughters will achieve our unrealized
heights of both career and domesticity?
And if they do, it’s not for us — but to create
their own environment of womanhood.
Our dreams, so unfulfilled. Our desires, so blatantly
transferred. Our plans, so thwarted by time and
circumstance.
What pain and loss our children might receive from us.
Why? Our own dreams for them are for lives
filled with the joy of accomplishment.
Bubbling over with harmony and the
satisfaction of creation realised.
We let them go. Waiting for them to come back,
wanting to share.
Knowing that we are aware but they are still alone.
And when they call to say “Hello”, the hunger
would overwhelm us all — except that it is
our hunger, not theirs.
So, we must, of necessity,
not let them know the depths
of our fear and our love.
We cannot truly be mother, friend, parent
and companion as we would wish.
Somewhere, sometime, it’s goodbye
while they move on — to a world and time
of their own that we will never truly know,
while we fear their pain which is still to come.
It may be too much for them to share with us
– and in that time we seek the peace of
mutual acceptance and understanding.
Perhaps unspoken, but they will know.
In silence, my child, simply touch my fingertips
and know the truth of parental love.
In Memory Of My Daughter Annette.
26th August 1967–21st October 2001
Footnote: I wrote this poem for a friend, who was afraid she was no longer her daughter’s friend. As so often happens, this was resolved as life went on and maturity brought understanding.
I read it for Annette at her funeral. I loved her then and still do.
