Mummy’s Gone

Mummy’s Gone

with children of two and eight,
you were just thirty two.
those buckets of water you lugged upstairs
had taken their toll on you.

breathlessness and blue fingernails
should have been a warning:
the fault in your ventricular septum
had been triggered and needed repairing.

uninsured, but too proud to ask,
you chose to be treated by the government
placed trust in those with no care for life
or what happened under their surgeon’s knife.

wish I hadn’t slept the night
I dreamt you’d not come out alive. I
begged you not to use Victoria,
but you believed that you’d survive.

the surgeons operated, though your temperature was up;
exposed a septic embolism when they cut
went to your brain and blocked blood flow,
causing seizures even as you slept.

stitched back roughly, your still warm body
was wrapped in the ward bedsheet

and discarded in the corridor on a gurney
like the homeless in the street.

starry eyed pollyanna warrior!
my vigil for you was to the drum
of your eight year old’s pacing chant
“mummy’s gone, mummy’s gone, mummy's gone".

it’s been years now, but that refrain
goes on and on and on