Dan Hardison

This Woman

She was born in 1886, married at 18, and had her first child a year later. Her sixth child only lived 10 months. The seventh child was born one month after her fifth child died. At the age of 46 and the height of the Great Depression, she entered a hospital for the insane. It is there she would die 36 years later.

falling
into nothingness . . .
autumn leaves

During her time in the hospital, her surviving children would visit on Sundays. They grew to adults and had families of their own. To their children and grandchildren, they spoke fondly of their mother but said little about how or why she came to be in a hospital for the insane. Things might have been different today for this woman.

prayer flags
dancing in the wind . . .
birch bark