Reading:  Missing

Mom packs daily to "go home,"  the nurses say,
Carefully buttons and folds each garment neatly.
Sometimes "her brother will pick her up."
Sometimes she wants to call her parents.
Once I asked her where home was.
She paused and said, "Well, where is (your father)?"
My dad has been dead 25 years.

Dear Mom, someday it will happen.
You will "go home"
        and you will at last be at peace,
        but we will miss you
Maybe even more than we miss you now.

                           by Louise Opheim  3/98