Authenticity
‘I hate you,’ she yelled
at the drug dealer
standing in the doorway
of his other, legal business
in the main street of town.
‘You ruined our boys!’ –
the lads just out of school
he gave jobs to and then
got addicted. ‘I hate you!’
She bellowed his name.
‘I hear you,’ he said sourly,
eventually. But it wasn’t him
she was really telling,
it was the town. Some
muttered. Others clapped.
Maybe they knew
she took those boys in,
fed them from her own pocket,
helped them set up a band….
One by one they got away.
She invited the whole town
to her birthday party this year.
‘Just turn up,’ she said. Privately
told me how honoured she felt
as community elders turned up.
She never told me a lie,
even when I didn’t like the truth.
And she never told me a truth
that wasn’t said in love,
nor one that didn’t help.
At her memorial service,
many wept. I made a speech
and told the truth. The truth was,
she was Love. (‘Hatred isn't wrong,’
she once said. ‘It springs from love.’
I didn’t understand at the time.
Thinking back, I do now.)
We told stories of what she gave us
We told stories of what she gave us
and how uncompromising she was.
And played her song: ‘I did it my way.’
