Last Picture

love is for ever and is not a limited resource

love is for ever and is not a limited resource
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We only get one chance to love because life is short

We only get one chance to love because life is short
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Our elderly folks need our love and attention

Our elderly folks need our love and attention
Click image to enlarge

Life is short

Life is short
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Introduction

In a poem very kindly donated by Carol Kate Chamberlain, entitled: 'Last Picture'  (below) here is a depiction of a true story which is a glimpse in to a sharing with loved ones during the last few days of their lives.   

Following Carol Kate's poem Raymond Van Neste has added a short article about how it's good to be aware of the necessity to cherish our elderly folks while they are still with us because life is very short.  

If we fail to love our loved ones during their last days on this earth,  not only from a hypothetical perspective but also from a perspective of reality,  then we fail to honour and love ourselves because as they are now so we will be also.  



Last Picture

Carol Kate Chamberlain


'Is the larder full?'  my father asked

'Let's go or we'll be late

To East Harpswell for our outing.'

And he kissed his wife and asked

'Where's Mom?'

We gathered round him


Of course he didn't see me

At my house on River Road

I never lived there

And the plumbing was fixed

Three years ago - not last week


He turned and with 

Little steps, shuffled off

And was gone again

We lingered after him

Finding him in the Day Room

where he turned and asked

'Who's boss in here?'

'You are, dad.' I said


He replied with lucid flicker

'I am not!' then turned 

To wander off again

To his brother George, he said

(who'd died in the First World War)


We gathered in a group

At last, for pictures

And though he meant to do many things

That day, restrained, 

He acquiesced and 

We were joined again 

- our family -

One Last time.



The End of Life 

Raymond Van Neste


NORMALITY

I like this poem a lot because of it's rendition of real life and how it is significant of the fact that at different stages of our lives we don't always think of our elderly folks as dying or leaving us here in the world without their presence any longer.  It's normal just to live life in a normal way right up until the end of life, as depicted in the poem.   

This is a good situation because it's in this kind of normality of life that people can be loved.   It's in this form of  normality of life that elderly people are not abandoned and left to fend for themselves, left lonely, to become more and more poverty stricken and tired.   It is through everyday living and caring for our elderly folks that we love them and want to help them unreservedly 


THE 'QUICKNESS' OF LIFE

If we take our elderly folks for granted we do so at our peril because we won't always have them with us.   It's during their last days that we need to give them added comfort and love.  This is the very least that we can do for our folks.  The point is that it's good to be aware of the 'quickness' of life and how a person's life is over in an instant .....here one minute and gone the next.  


TRUTH

If life is short then it goes without saying that we too will have to face saying goodbye when our time comes.  If we are kind to our loved ones, our elderly folks here and now, then we are kind to ourselves because in being true to them we are in turn being true to ourselves.

November 2008



Carol Kate Chamberlain and Raymond Van Neste.  'Last Picture' and 'The End of Life'  Copyright Painting for Charity 2008 ©

For more of Carol Kate Chamberlain's work please see a very special and unique poem entitled 'Snow'.   Also, Carol Kate Chamberlain's biography can be seen in the 'People Around the World' section of the website's News and Articles.