I Wore This Dress Today for You, Mom by Kim Dower

(TW: Dementia, death, trauma)

I made a concerted effort last year to read more books of poetry. At least some of it is me trying to hit my targets for the year and poetry books are generally very short haha, but I also just love poetry. I got this book at a Friends of the Denver Library book sale they held at the Historic Elitch Theater on the last day of the used book sale which was bag day. I was intrigued by the title and art, and upon reading what ensues is a really lovely series of poems about motherhood. The poet watched her mother deteriorate in the face of dementia, which I felt tremendous empathy for having cared for many dementia patients in my career as a nurse. I can’t imagine how much more that must hurt when it’s someone like your mother you love going through it. She writes beautiful, heartbreaking verses about her mother’s decline, and here I’m going to share my favorite of those:

Everybody Loves Dinner
When I walk into my mother’s house
I see a pot on the stove high flame

charring the sides
she thinks she’s boiling

water but the water has evaporated
like a ghost fleeing the scene

leaving the bottom scalded, a blackness
that cannot be reversed.

It was only a matter of months. You see,
she was very careful in the kitchen

taught me the same:
check the pilot lights, smell for gas

unclutter the space where you cook
simple things like this she taught me

so last week when I visited when I saw
the blue flame hugging the sides of that old pot

sitting too close to the Kleenex I’d hand her
sobbing as she watched TV

so much violence, was it always like this,
sit down, darling, let’s eat, everybody loves dinner

but there was no food, nothing there to cook
I hadn’t brought a thing, what was I thinking

but we smiled, held hands, I changed the channel
she told me she felt full and was ready for bed.

I’m really moved by what she has to say on body positivity, grief, and how her poetry seems to serve as a salve for her suffering. At 128 pages, it’s a pretty quick read even if you take your time and digest it as all good poetry deserves. If you only read a few poems from this, I recommend “Fontanelle”, which is about her son in the ICU after a terrible accident and “Visiting Eleanor” which details warm, nostalgic memories of her piano teacher.