Mum was diagnosed with cancer in the early summer of 1998, she died the following March 1999; I couldn’t get up to London to see her regularly so I started a correspondence; sixteen years later I realise that our correspondence didn’t just stop with her death, the same as our life together didn’t: our life together was always the response between the words and events …
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Dear Mum,
it was good to read from you
in this new write of relationship
although the tiredness in your word
was obvious when it came:
so you might expect a remission
for weeks or years or not, which
certainly sharpens a life, and with no
dependents to consider anymore
preparing ready for the time
more-clear-now to come, the better
to put your life into its order,
is it God calling you now?
I know you have your congregation
around you (even if it is too much at times)
how families ebb and go in peoples’ lives
only sometimes built around the tree
we four were close for a while forming the
parts of each others’ lives; it took a long time to
emerge, even after university, even after
Nan died, even as my own family grew,
I was still with us in Genesta Road; and yet
there you are, all through the chemo, I see
you adjust your life talking of ‘excess
baggage’ – I was happy to take possession
of the photographs: of you working at the
office seeing those goods in and out, those
huge ships like family, with their chapter
and verse, those endless invoices in triplicate
smell of typewriter ribbon, the bad air-conditioning
the silly young office workers testing up their futures
your giggly exchanges with them, all part of that endless work
up and down the River through endless years like a grate
take care, much love,
————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–
part of the ongoing life and page of … Mum
death & family & love & Mum & Nan & reading wormhole: letters to Mum I – a walk / and talk
Genesta Road wormhole: still there?
identity wormhole: ‘n’
letting go wormhole: I will eventually drift tectonic
life & time wormhole: tag cloud poem VI – anyone’s eyes
Thames wormhole: still there // above the / Dallin Road / allotments / looking high over the river and the city
university wormhole: … thank you
words wormhole: words
work wormhole: the chiropodist
mlewisredford 