A Tough Cookie Poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

A Tough Cookie

On the surface of life, my mother was a tough cookie
of three children she lost two when they were fairly young.
Tearless she attended their funeral and people thought
she should have cried more.
I heard her tears the pain from her heart that could not
be stopped, an ache so painful that no pills could stop it.
One night I went into her bedroom in the hope of stilling
her grief, she had a pillow over the face to stifle her yammer.
told me to leave the grief was hers alone.
My mother kept her sorrow for herself she was unable
share her grief with anyone least of all me who for reason
I shall not understand she kept me at a distance and I had
to watch as she sunk into the mess of alcoholism, this was
her answer to a world not of her creation. A contrarian
few came to her funeral, those who did has been blessed
with the good fortune of understanding that life has many
expressions and you are free to have your own.