Dear Grandma

Michelle is a volunteer on the Saturday morning shift at South Chingford Community Library. She spends part of her time at home in Saudi Arabia, and part in Chingford where her mother lives.

I find this poem very moving.

       DEAR GRANDMA 

She sits alone, small and frail,
childlike in an adult's chair.
But there is life inside that wizened shell.
Her heart and soul burn on untouched.               

🌺 But that soul cries to be free from strains of age;   
she's lived her life, why should she struggle on?                                         

🌺 But for me, I cannot be free, let go of ties that bind,
of memories of those times gone by
when I was young and small and weak,
and it was she who cared for me.                        
Many years later, when with my baby boy I returned,
great grandma was so proud.
And just as if clocks had turned back in time,
she rocked his cot and fed him by her hand.
Full of love she bought him toys and proudly called him 'my little man'. 

🌺But as he took his first few steps, as he grew strong,
her legs grew slow, she felt her age.
And as once ago she'd led me by the hand,
now I pushed young and old together in one chair....         

🌺The years soon passed by and too long I stayed away.
When I returned my heart it shook, I felt the love that overwhelms,
but most of all, my heart it cried for all it hadn't done. 

               Michelle Jamal

                RETURN TO LIST OF POEMS 


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