My husband had a failing heart, I have a serious mental illness. When I found out I was pregnant, we weren’t going to go through with it. But when I had my first scan and saw that little heart fluttering, I knew I was going to be a mum. Sadly my husband died when our son was three and a half, and i was left to be a single mum. My son is now twelve and has been the making of me.

Miracle

We were in a soap opera style medical dead end dilemma
You with your broken heart and me with my broken mind
And you, my little miracle with your tiny butterfly heart beat
Fighting for your right, fighting for justice, fighting for life
Before your valuable life had even begun
Before your life was rife with strife
Before your life was gold plate on the end of an artist’s knife
Before we saw on that tiny screen that you were real
Before your life was LIFE
OUR LIFE.

The room was dark, the air was rank with the taste of expectation
The stench of not wanting to bond, not wanting to get fond
The nurse was alert, we were terse, all those feelings we hadn’t rehearsed
All those barriers made for tearing down
And that tiny heartbeat, fluttering like an angel’s wings
Spoke to us, spoke of things, of family rings, of a child raised finer than wise kings.

We were the merry three, we never did foresee
That we would one day be the hurting two
When the beat of your broken heart became silent like the morning dew
When we had always looked up to you, loved you.
But we made the most beautiful duet, even if as a mother I had little clue.

And now our son is twelve.
He has his kingly ways, the face of an innocent angel
Yet there are those testing times he tries to pray
For his long gone daddy, for the fun time family days
The childish pictures on the fridge of the happy family three
The stories at school he tells of sitting on his daddy’s loving knee
Of teddy bear’s picnics and sharing with his daddy cups of lukewarm tea

But he knows his daddy’s love will always be here
For love is a memory of an angel in heaven, a star in the universe
Love is a fleeting feeling, love is a beautiful prayer
And his daddy is always here
Beating inside his little heart
His daddy is always right here…

©2020 Sarah Drury