She walked past our house every morning
Pushing the pram
With two children
In tow
Behind
Struggling
In all weathers
Against the lashing rain
Pushed back by the wind
Through the snow
Towards the school
Constantly late
Always behind
Struggling
———-
One day she didn’t appear
I heard through a friend
That social services had been involved
And took her children away
Away into care
Away from her
Away from their mother
Away for the best
———-
She doesn’t walk past our house every morning
Anymore
No more getting to school
No more fighting
No more being late
No more children
Just
A different kind of late
But still
Struggling.
———-
Written for Theme Thursday
Life From A Park Bench 
dang. i have been in on that process of taking kids away…its not fun from any aspect…and often hard to understand as well…i know a few kids lives saved in the process…not a decision to take lightly…
This was aheat breaking thing to watch and hear about and yo be so helpless. Just pray.
sad and tragic. certainly a few hearts are broken and who would know if the best was done for the children. I have often wondered if the state can take away the children why can’t they take the mother with them and house them all. it certainly would be less expensive than foster care and maybe just maybe a family could be saved.
I think. the same it is a pity they could not be all kept together. Thanks
sad and tragic ..why can’t the state take the mother also and keep the family in tact
That story just breaks my heart
I know just how you feel. The best we can do is pray
“They” always know best, don’t they?
Liked the development in your sad story, understated but the stronger for that.
Maybe sometimes taking the children away is the best thing especially when there is abuse and drug abuse, but it seems as if it is not always the best thing. Foster care houses are not always the best places to be and society seems to just want to find a place to put the children so they do not have to think about them. The talk lately is about how all the kids belong to the village and it is the villages job to take care of them. I do not think putting them into homes is taking care of them. Trying to keep them with their parents is possibly the best option or at least to keep the parents around them so that they do not feel abandoned by them. Even supervised visits are better then no visits. And the parents have to get their life in order to visit the kids.
I guess there is no easy answer to this problem but your poem is a total tear jerker and tells us a lot. Our children belong to their families and families should stay together. In a perfect world all the kids would have perfect parents, a perfect house and a perfect life. Maybe if our economies were not so messed up then maybe people would have to work such long hours and see their children suffer because of it. We cannot have it all unless something somewhere loses something to another.
Thanks for sharing such a thoughtful and insightful poem with us all for this weeks Theme Thursday. Hope your week has been going well.