Remembering a Tough Woman

Returning to a memory of a mother long gone

By Juan Monimo on iStock (image licensed by author)

My mother long buried, her grave
returning her to where she was born,
where I was born, where my dad sat her
and my brother on the steps when I was six,
throwing us out like the evening trash.

Our first house still there in an Illinois
river town upstream from St. Louis,
the steps where we sat waiting for my
grandfather to come fetch us worn, damp,
slick in the morning dew.

Drove my mom up the River Road
in her last year, sheer rock bluffs on
our right and the widest part
of the mudded Mississippi flowing
past us on its way to New Orleans.

We stopped in front of the tiny red
house, four rooms and a wet basement.
My mom five feet and a 100 pounds
touching 80, toughest woman I
ever met. Raised three boys on her
own, married drunks and beaters, always
looking for one who would save her…
in the end she carried all of us
on her frail shoulders, doing it
alone until late in life when she
found one who would love her.