Dying-Mentia

She clutched her armrest with her ginger-like fingers

Toil and fatigue on them still linger.

Curvy, scraggy, trembling knuckles,

Under their clench wood buckles.

She murmured and whispered all to herself.

Looking strangely and frustratingly to those

Who, she mothered. 

Fear gripped the house, everyone, hopeless.

To me she said, take me away, I know them not,

I told her, I came to see my wife and meet her

The first time I realized the pain of dementia.

First time I was relieved of the pain of death.

My mother to COVID had fallen.

Her eyes felt me, saw me and spoke to me

Till she let that last breath out.

These eyes are lost, alien, to her own.

Sons and daughters living in total fear of death. 

Jolting her head back and forth,

Reaching out suddenly to her facial contours

She lived amidst her own as if all unknown.

There was an abyss of impending insecurity

Of what they would be, like her or even worse.

Life is not tiresome, fear tires out

When health bleeds, it's knockout.

There's no penalty worse than this 

Where goals lead to you, yet you 

Miss winning stroke by stroke.