My mother is the lady sitting on the left, this was taken while she was expecting me. Colouring and sharpening by Copilot Ai

My mother died when I was 4 days old; this poem is to mark her passing in the early 1950s.

12^th to 16^th of February

I was four days old
when the world shifted.
A breath, a heartbeat,
a name spoken over me
and then silence
where a mother’s voice
should have been.

I have no memory of her,
yet she lives in the shape of my story:
in the date that returns each year
like a tide that knows its way home,
in the questions that linger
between what was felt
and what was never told.

My birth father, Joe,
stood somewhere in that early landscape
a figure I could not see,
yet part of the thread
that wove me into being.
And there were others too:
Fred, Helen, Ann,
and Margaret
siblings whose lives ran alongside mine,
even when our paths
were scattered to different homes,
different names,
different stories.

They carried me to London,
arms that meant well,
though love can be a quiet thing
when you are small
and longing for a face
you never saw.

I grew up learning
that absence has weight,
that a child can feel
out of place in his own house,
that being loved
and feeling loved
are not always the same.

But today
on the anniversary of her leaving
I let myself imagine her.
Not as a shadow,
but as a woman who held me
for four brief days,
long enough to hope,
long enough to pray,
long enough to leave a tenderness
I still carry
even when I cannot name it.

So, I stand here,
a man shaped by loss
but not defined by it,
and I honour her.

For the life she gave,
for the love she never had time to show,
for the family whose names
still echo through my story,
for the thread that ties
Joseph and Richard
into one whole life.

Mother,
I remember you
the only way I can
by living,
by wondering,
by letting this day
be gentle.

---

Image from family source. My mother is the lady sitting on the left, this was taken while she was expecting me.

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