Cliff

It was back in nineteen twenty two that he fell really sick.

My father’s little brother, three year old baby Cliff.

His sister Dulcie had the same disease, Diphtheria, the doctors said.

And at age just two after a long hard fight, the little blue-eyed girl was dead.

Cliff lived, but perhaps it hurt his brain.  We never will be sure.

For it was back then in the ‘old days’.  We now know so much more.

He was most times sweet and gentle.  But, occasionally,

he would argue and speak rubbish and become incredibly angry.

Dad described him as “just normal, but could throw real hissy fits.”

But more and more came mood swings that only Dad could fix.

He became at times uncontrollable.  And at age twenty-five

to the sorrow of my grandparents was institutionalised.

My father saw him often.  But Mum kept us away.

‘Mental patients were dangerous,’ was the sad way in those days.

So I never got to know him as I did my other kin.

But I remember him distinctly, he was a handsome gentleman.

I have a photo of him when he was very small. 

Blonde hair like my father, with a big and beaming smile.

I have a childhood memory of a gentle-seeming guy.

With bright eyes like my Dad’s, that reflected the summer sky.

He died back in the sixties when he was forty-seven.

A healthy individual.  I’ll always have suspicion.

For knowing what I know now of mental care back then,

I believe he would have been abused, that beautiful blue eyed man.

So half of his entire life he spent within a prison.

Wasted years in what was then the Insane Asylum.

And when I heard that he had gone I felt intense deep pain.

I was acquainted with him hardly at all but when he died I cried for him.

Over the years I’ve loved and lost and now so very much miss

many people I have known.  But for them I rarely weep.

They all lived happy, useful lives and were able to make many friends.

And no matter how young or old they were, they left something at the end.

Then I think of a lonely man who was so much like my father.

Who lived his life not knowing life and not knowing many others.

And sometimes when I ponder what’s fair in all our grief,

I think of the uncle I never knew.  And I still have tears for Cliff.