With an abiding glint of love in her unfaded eyes, 
Brown eyes that inhabit my dreams and memories,
My mother has dementia, a cross to bear
So saith her silver-tinted hair. Laboured for her family.
With her handbag gripped in her laughing lap,
She still smiles at my silly jokes and repartee 
We share so many ways yet she's the opposite of me:
Freer, grander, more baroque, a heroine.
The clear-eyed protector of my younger days
My sanctuary and accomplice. A rebel with a cause.
Patient with all my mistakes. Loving her children, 
The tenderest, my brother, Pete, who
She took on a seemingly endless series of buses to hospitals.
For years.  God blessed her when she lost him, I shared her tears.