{"id":478,"date":"2017-09-04T13:34:09","date_gmt":"2017-09-04T13:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/?p=478"},"modified":"2017-09-04T13:34:09","modified_gmt":"2017-09-04T13:34:09","slug":"a-surprise-poem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/2017\/09\/04\/a-surprise-poem\/","title":{"rendered":"A surprise poem"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My mother passed way a few months ago, and it has fallen to me to review the decades of paperwork she had accumulated.<\/p>\n<p>I started out ruthless, glancing at files and tossing them. That didn&#8217;t last long. A sense of obligation crept over me, a feeling that I was not fulfilling my duties. Some of these papers were dated from before I was born. Who was I to just toss them aside? How could I not give each one at least some consideration?<\/p>\n<p>So I&#8217;ve spent the past months flipping page-by-page through the receipts, tax records, and to-do lists, feeling foolish and more than a little embarrassed that it was taking so long.<\/p>\n<p>Last night, however, tucked between packing lists and mover contracts, I found a little piece of script, written in my mom&#8217;s hand:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>The time has come, the world has turned.<\/em><br \/>\n<em> This lovely home, its keep has earned.<\/em><br \/>\n<em> Four children grown and gone their way.<\/em><br \/>\n<em> We too must pack. We cannot stay.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is the first piece of poetry I&#8217;ve ever seen from my mother. I love the idea, though, that she was a closet poet, writing verse for nobody but herself. It is one more thing that she and I shared, though neither of us knew it.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-479 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/FourChildrenGone600x366-300x183.jpg\" alt=\"Four Children Gone\" width=\"300\" height=\"183\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/FourChildrenGone600x366-300x183.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/FourChildrenGone600x366.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Have you ever written a poem just for yourself? It&#8217;s an idea I never paid much attention to, until now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":479,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","category-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/FourChildrenGone600x366.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-7I","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":480,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478\/revisions\/480"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}