Posted 02/18/2019 by EB Stark2 Comments Art

How You Know Your Aging Mother Needs Help by Margaret Stawowy

MargaretStawowy-How...MotherNeedsHelp-flipped — Background photo: Tatlin/Pixabay, CC0.
Manipulation and design layout: Elizabeth Stark

Margaret Stawowy has spent the last five years caring for her declining mother while working full time and putting out a poetry book, Keeper of the Pond (Conflux Press, 2017). A resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, she often listens to NPR on her challenging morning commute and regularly hears a commercial from an assisted living facility about the seven signs of an aging parent needing extra help. She actually investigated securing a place for her mother in that facility as a low-income resident, but learned that their idea of low income was still beyond reach. After navigating the nearly non-existent safety net for the low-income and elderly, Margaret began writing a series of poems of which this is one. Her mother died this past July.

Margaret is a Pushcart nominee whose work has won awards from Beyond Baroque and Atlanta Review. View Margaret’s website here.