ALL ALONE

[mummsie]

ALL ALONE
Sue Pearce©

All alone, just like an orphan
for long ago her father strayed.
Where to turn? What was her future?
She'd no answers to pursuade
peace to come from out the turmoil
where confusion reigned supreme.
There was none to offer comfort.
Wake her from this senseless dream.

She had barely entered teen years,
much to learn, much more to know.
Times a girl so needs a mother
by her side, to guide, help grow.
She is taken to a girls home,
enters doors to rooms so cold.
Feels the gloom within the walls there,
yearns and crys for days of old.

Long dark days turn months to years now,
rears a family of her own.
By their side to love and guide them,
all the things that she'd not known.
Holy angels call upon her,
raise her up to heavens door.
Where her mother waits no longer,
in who's arms she'll weep no more.

[Terry]

G/day Sue,
Having come from a broken home myself, I can relate in some way to your poem.
I spent several years in Catholic boarding schools and even though I was well looked after,
They were the most lonely years of my life and I was determined that it would never happen to
my children - a touching poem Sue.

Terry

[Maureen K Clifford]

the unseen damage inflicted on kids that surface years later - no doubt done with the best of intentions at the time as in the stolen generation - but the hurt and scars remain for ever. Sad and poignant write Sue

Cheers

Maureen

[mummsie]

Thank you Maureen and Terry. Actually, I based this poem on my mother. She never knew her Dad, and lost her mother at the tender age of 14, was then taken to a girls home, where she never felt loved. She rarely ever spoke of her mother or childhood. When the past came up, she would change the subject. Over the years I have thought a lot about this, and I've reasoned that that time of her life was too painful to talk about. I don't think she ever got over losing her Mum.

Thanks for taking the time to read and comment.
Cheers
Sue

[Heather]

Sad poem Sue.

My maternal grandmother had a similarly lonely childhood - lost her mother when she was a toddler and was sent away to another country to live with cold, unloving, spinster aunts. Her brother was put in a home. Her baby sister adopted. It was a sign of the times unfortunately.

Heather

[mummsie]

What I could never understand Heather, was why so many of these familys were split up and sent to different institutions, often with little understanding as to why. My father was sent to the notorious Goulburn orphanage, with his younger brother who he was allowed very little contact with[apparently because neither were coping] His sister was sent to a different orphanage in Sydney, and his younger brother adopted out. He was never able to trace his adopted brother, and was well in his forties before finding his other brother and sister. The effect on many of these children was irrepairable. As you say, it was common practice in the early years.

Sue

[Neville Briggs]

Atale Sue. Have you ever read " Boy " by Roald Dahl. It is the story of his early life, after his father died he was put into the English Boarding School system. You get the picture.

I think that school tradition, plus the British authoritarian tradition where command and control was thought to be the best form of management made our institutions what they were. People "in charge" and unaccountable seem to easily turn into sociopaths.