A Wound So Deep

A poem

The pain that started long ago
Still hasn’t gone completely silent
There is no way that we could know
If everyone was violent

The words more painful than the actions
All the anger manifesting the reminders
That carry on through the simplest interactions
Which are not meant for outsiders

The choice of the right path is clear
I wonder how others could have missed it
Maybe they were standing too near
To the source of the wound that runs so deep

One of the first poems that I published here was “The Beast”, a poem about dementia and my grandmother. It was inspired by the way dementia has changed my grandmother, and my mother’s perception of her.

For more than 10 days now, my grandmother is being hospitalized and things are not looking good. It’s not surprising, considering her age and other health issues, but it’s still hard for me to know that she’s going through so much and they’re not letting her go be at peace.

What inspired the poem above is the way my grandmother treats my mother and her sister (my aunt).

I have shared through poems and stories how abusive my mother was to my siblings and me. She learned to be this way from my grandmother. What’s interesting is that our grandmother was really nice to all of her grandchildren. There were some snarky comments here and there (for example, about my sister’s sense of fashion when she was a teenager) but nothing major. Similarly, my mother is behaving like an angel towards my nephew.

Now that grandma’s “social filter” is completely gone, she treats my mother and my aunt like she used to when they were children. She’s not physically violent (most likely because she can barely move), but she’s not holding back on her words.

My mother and aunt are struggling with that, and I also have a difficult time hearing it (when I call to see how she’s doing, or when my mother tells me what she was saying) because she uses the exact same -very hurtful- phrases our mother used toward us. It’s obvious now where she learned…

Related posts:

The reign of Felipe II is one of the most studied due to the importance it had in our country and in Europe. Of the many possible ways that exist to express monarchical and political power, Felipe…

Hello Everyone! In this blog post, I would like to talk about the importance and need of considering Mobile Accessibility for our websites and applications. Mobile Accessibility(a11y) refers to…

Winter has always been a bittersweet season for me. For most of my life, until recently, I’ve considered myself a “summer” person. During my childhood, summer meant being outside all day long. To…