With an abiding glint of love in her faded eyes, 
Brown eyes that inhabit my dreams, spark my memories,
My mother has dementia, a cross for us to bear
So saith her silver-tinted hair. She laboured for our 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 of WW2
The clear-eyed protector of my younger days
My sanctuary and my accomplice. A rebel with a cause.
Patient with all my mistakes. Loving her children, 
The tenderest, my brother, Pete, who died, young.