Written on 23 May 2009; published on 20 December 2018

• GOODBYE FROM MOM, by Alice B. Clagett

Image: “Winter in Maryland,” by Alice B. Clagett, ca. 2014, CC BY-SA 4.0, from “Awakening with Planet Earth,” https://awakeningwithplanetearth.com ..

Image: “Winter in Maryland,” by Alice B. Clagett, ca. 2014, CC BY-SA 4.0, from “Awakening with Planet Earth,” https://awakeningwithplanetearth.com .. 

Dear Ones,

In her latter years, when I was not by her side, mom and I used to talk on the phone twice a day. Here is the last phone conversation I had with my mother before her passing …

GOODBYE FROM MOM
by Alice B. Clagett
–1:30 pm on Freeway 210, Saturday, 23 May 2009,
heading out to a Sierra Club retreat at Mount Baldy

It was a warm spring day in Southern California,
and not too smoggy either.
My mother’s health had been failing.
I called her up and the caretaker handed her the phone.
I said, “Hi, mom, it’s Alice.”

She said, “Honey, I love you, you know I do,
but I have to go. I’m sorry.”
And she started to cry.

I said, “That’s ok, mom. I love you too.”
And she handed the phone back to the caretaker.

It’s no good crying on a freeway. I ought to pull over and stop.

–from Link: “Goodbye from Mom,” a poem by Alice B. Clagett, written on 23 May 2009; published on 20 December 2018 … https://wp.me/p2Rkym-kRQ ..

……….

Alice B. Clagett

Except where otherwise noted, “The Chalice and the Crucible” by Alice B. Clagett … https://chaliceandcrucible.com/ … is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0) … https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ ..