Diagnosed with Alzheimer's

The only thing my mother gave me is love

And the only thing I did for her is write this poem

I'm etching each word indelibly so I'm less likely to forget

And enunciating each syllable exactly, tho she soon won't remember

While the face of her son becomes the face of a stranger

And everything she does is already a memory

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The only thing my mother gave me is memory

And the only thing I did for her is write this love

Distance and time conspire to make her a stranger

While I wrestle ennui in coherence to write a poem

But I recite it daily with hope and the goal to remember

As I read it aloud to an audience I dread may easily forget

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The only thing my mother gave me is forget

And the only thing I did for her is write this memory

All of the details are there, but not in the order she remembers

And the performance of each anecdote is tinged with love

Yet remains subtext, like the blank spaces in a poem

Or a modern interpretation that forces the context to seem stranger

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The only thing my mother gave me is stranger

And the only thing I did for her is write this forget

Like the way I recall the recitation rather than the writing of a poem

Or the day she upbraided me for swearing is not a shared memory

Or how her handsy and huggy and public expressions of love

Are now occasions I wish I more fondly remembered

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The only thing my other gave me is remember

And the only thing I did for her is write this stranger

Did I pay enough attention to her lessons about how to love?

Did I learn too much about letting go? to forgive? to forget?

Is mother, mom, mama just a mnemonic for memory?

Is anyone listening while I SHOUT THIS POEM?!

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The only thing my mother gave me is poem

And the only thing I did for her is write this remember

I'm not sure if I was raised more on good or bad memories

I don't know why I can't relate to strangers

While there are many histories of my mother I'd like to forget

In the end, I wrote this poem for her, with love

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The only poem my mother gave stranger

was love remember the only thing forget

did for her was memory this love