My Mother's Madness

Dearest Longo of the ever-confessing poetry of your life.... Thank you. Now, speaking of madness, my father suffered from bipolar as long as I knew him. That was always a fear in the back of my mind.... when and if the madness will come? Will I know it? Life was hard. Drugs that never worked for long. And for the most part depression was such that there was little interaction with his children... part generational. During his highs, he was fun, witty with an absurd, child-like sense of humour that seemed to always embarrass me... after all I wanted a Professor-type for my *ideal* father. Too soon the high went into acute paranoia & schizophrenia...probate courts and horrible drugs, shock treatments. (One of my saddest days was learning he had scar damage on his heart--probably from those shocks--doctors disclosed.) But he had a irrepressible work ethic regardless of the drugs, the highs and lows. My mother? She sang opera, taught us to love: nature, books and learning. She sewed, knitted, cooked & baked like an angel. And somehow kept a semblance of normalcy and forgiveness, albeit in bits and peaces. Heaven and hell were evident in my home growing up. I didn't need to believe in a heaven or hell after death. Love always, Anna "The plain man is familiar with blindness and deafness, and knows from his everyday experience that the look of things is influenced by his senses, but it never occurs to him to regard the whole world as a creation of his senses." ~ Ernst Mach

Ann of Norway Oh Anna our Anna, and Joe with their fears, how horrible to have an unknown quantity hanging in the mind like a cobweb that won't go away, how haunting the thoughts you must have, and yet until it comes there is no need to use it to weigh the days joys and sorrows, and yet I do so understand the why of your worries. About this poem which is so well written that we are within its spell completely, the real and the unreal, the sad and the bitter sweet, are poignantly described with the heaviness of the stone legs making the rhythm throughout the text in its relentless beat to the end, I loved that and that's what made the whole thing worth the five stars that rise enough to spotlight this poem. May you stay in this stream of words, wise and wonderful with no effects of your mother's demise affecting your 'voice' with their madness, we don't believe it will come to you in that manner, I hope we are right. Your friend Annuccia

Its been said with much more panache than I ... sigh well written love and big hugs your Jayne-Chloe Quote:- It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense.---Robert Green Ingersoll