Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness throughout the world.

Special Treat – Gabrielle Morgan

Happy Mothers Day

May 14, 2006

 TIME OUT

Gabrielle Morgan

            I walked under the old elm trees.  It was a cold winter’s day and the air was sharp.  There was no one to break the stillness.  I was conscious only of the dank smell of wet leaves underfoot and the sheep and cattle grazing peacefully in the paddock across the creek.

            At last it was possible to be myself, away from people.  My thoughts were in emotional turmoil.  Watching death creep insidiously through my mother’s body as cancer claimed her was hard to bear.  I tried to grasp the inevitability of losing her.  She was noble in her dying, never complained.

           “Andy’s randy today,” was all she would say when beset with pain.

           Relations were staying from interstate in their goodness.  I was tense with lack of sleep and they seemed an encroachment on my last days with my mother.  My thoughts were too profound to cope with the everyday chores of nursing, feeding and entertaining visitors.

           I had placed all the photographs of every one dear to her on the antique chest facing her bed.  Her father who had died when she was twelve, her mother and sisters, children and grandchildren, all representing the value of her living.

          My mother was leaving me.  The thought left me cold with anguish.  The helpless finality overcame me.  I watched the cows grazing, oblivious to my sadness, the water gently flowing over the stones on the creek bed and the graceful Willows strengthening my being with their life and beauty.  I escaped into the solace which nature bestowed on me.

          The words of T.S. Eliot came to mind: “Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future, and time future contained in time past.”

          After an hour in the tranquility of my surrounds, I headed back to my  mother’s bedside able to continue to give her the benefit of my renewed strength.

 Gabby Morgan

gabriellenicholls@bigpond.com