None Shall See

ON THE DEATH OF A FAVOURITE AUNT

It feels all wrong to open your old letters,
To turn the dog-eared pages of your book,
Familiar names, phone numbers and addresses,
A few must be informed - and so we look.
Have we the right to pry through things you cherished?
Touch treasures of someone so lately dead?
Is it better we should think your youth forgotten?
Better these pretty love notes stay unread?

A letter with crushed roses in its pages,
He sent his love on your last night alone;
Tomorrow Darling, you'll be mine for ever
and I'll be yours, our separate lives are done.
In pencil on an envelope, 'I love you.
My Darling we've had such a glorious leave,
You were sleeping when I left; I bent to kiss you,
Now perfume from your hair clings to my sleeve.'

We're glad we know you were not always distant,
You didn't always find it hard to smile
But when your heart is broken three times over
Recovery takes more than just a while.
Two boys you bore and lost them both as children,
Accepted grief, and struggled to be brave?
When your Love was claimed in battle, who consoled you
As he followed your two sons into the grave?

The photo's say your teenage years were joyful,
You laughed and smiled, you lived and loved a lot;
Your happiness was blighted through misfortune;
By forty, memories were all you'd got.
By sixty, friends all hoped you had forgotten,
You might have been a spinster in their eyes,
Nobody saw the tears you shed at seventy,
At eighty no one listened to your sighs.

And now you're gone, you left us all your trinkets,
Old photographs, some money, a few books,
Though we remember happy times together,
Sadnesses stay unseen if no one looks.
We have no right to pry through things you cherished,
Touch memories of one so lately dead.
But we're glad to know you loved and that you were loved,
Better those pretty love notes have been read?