Regrets

This poem is personal. I lost my mum just before my 17th birthday. I didn't always treat her with the respect she deserved, being a stroppy teenager at the time, something I will always regret. She died in January 1959 but we knew in the Autumn of 1958 that it was terminal cancer. She was 46.

I miss you in the Autumn
when the season's red and gold.
For that is when my father
broke the news that left me cold.
I found it hard to contemplate;
life, without you anymore.
Those memories, of leaving school,
rushing, hungry, through our door.


I took your love for granted.
How selfish I had been.
I put it down to youthfulness,
I was nearly seventeen. 
All throughout your illness
you never said 'you knew'
But I was being over cheerful.
It must have given you a clue.


I tried so hard to hide it.
I was crying so inside.
So sad I wasn't with you
on the very day you died.
Time has dulled the pain
of that memory, life goes by.
But on those Autumn anniversaries
that's when I'm liable to cry.


Wherever you may be, dear Mum
forgive my youthful ways.
You know I really loved you,
thanks for happy childhood days. 



In memory of Ethel May Wilson   1912 - 1959