Time Long Past

Above is a photo of my mother when she was 13 years old - Maureen Claire. Wasn't she pretty? My father loved this pic of her - the girl in the blue dress! Below is a photo of her last October (2007) on her 89th birthday.

Here she is at 89 - the daughter of the last Southern Belle:

Time and our lives pass by so quickly. Just yesterday she was a young girl in Mississippi;

just yesterday...

- she was a young wife with a small daughter and a husband dead at a very young age

- she was in nurse's training and met a rakish, older man who was brought into the emergency room after a car accident

- she was a college student with two young daughters and a troubled marriage

- she was a mother again at 39 to a very very small girl

- she became weaker and largely confined to her home.

Here's a poem for you, Maureen Claire; I hope you have a wonderful day.

Time Long Past

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Like the ghost of a dear friend dead

Is Time long past.

A tone which is now forever fled,

A hope which is now forever past,

A love so sweet it could not last,

Was Time long past.

There were sweet dreams in the night

Of Time long past:

And, was it sadness or delight,

Each day a shadow onward cast

Which made us wish it yet might last,

That Time long past.

There is regret, almost remorse,

For Time long past.

'Tis like a child's belovèd corse

A father watches, till at last

Beauty is like remembrance, cast

From Time long past.