Would Have Been

                  Would Have Been

Friday would have been her birthday

and I would have bought her clothes, a bracelet,

or some trinket she would have liked.

Although in her later years, she barely noticed the birthdays and holidays

that had once been so important to her.

At Christmas I was too busy to focus on the one gift I didn’t have to buy.

But her birthday, Mother’s Day--

they will be strangely empty this year.

As her illness estranged her life,

so it has shaped her death.

What am I supposed to feel?

Her death would have been sadder

were not her life so sad.

Meanwhile, the would have beens

hang on me like clothes,

but in a small part of my life, like a bracelet,

a trinket of the grief I would have borne

if our lives would have been different.