struggles – Jovis on a Journey…

Battered by life, yet courageous still, he struggled with each step as he climbed up that hill. He lived all alone, he was now eighty-one, for his beloved wife Alice had long since passed on. And the shop in the village is at the top of the hill, he walked up there slowly on odd weekdays still.

He promised his Alice that he’d never give in, though it was hard he took it on the chin. And to her memory he climbed up the hill every week, not saying much, he’d no breath left to speak. But there was another good reason why he went up like that, the cemetery’s up there and he went for a chat. With his Alice, who he loved for the whole of his life, who made him so happy while she was his wife.

He carried his bag with a flask filled with tea, and a small pack of biscuits which he ate about three. Together they chose a nice spot near a tree, where a bench had been placed by the council you see. He sat down and chatted to his Alice with a smile, and then listened as she answered him after a while. He knew that some people must have thought he was daft, he told this to Alice and together they laughed.

After a while he gathered his things and then said his goodbyes as he now turned to leave. There was always a teardrop that fell from his face that he wiped away slowly on the edge of his sleeve.

He carried on like this for so many years, until finally he too turned to dust, but the message he left with his Alice for us, is we should love for ever, we just really must.

Thinking back yet again to my childhood
And the shoelace I couldn’t quite fasten
To the many ways Mum used to help me
With those little skills parents pass on.
Six children to love and she really did
She would though, she was our Mum
As well as soothing our often cut knees
She cooked all the food for our tum.
She’d darn our socks and wash our clothes
And iron things we don’t iron now
Then all of it would just disappear into drawers
As if done by magic somehow.
But Mum didn’t have it anyway easy
Dad died at just fifty-two
And Mum struggled on and raised us alone
But at night-time she cried, we all knew.
As the new day began there would be not a sign
Of the heartache her nights brought to her
She got on with the task of raising her brood
To her feelings she’d rarely refer.
Dad had grown vegetables to feed us
He grew dahlias for my mother, his love
They’ve both been long gone now from this place
Now they stroll hand in hand up above.