They watched her go,
never knowing that she wouldn't return.
They stood by her grave,
four crying,
one too young to understand.
Each one lost their mother,
and each one lost something more.
The eldest buried with his mother,
what childhood he had left.
The star gazer lost his link to the heavens,
or maybe found it.
The singer buried his ever patient teacher,
his muse.
The prankster lost the smile he had always loved,
had always striven to bring to her face.
The blue eyed baby had a hole left in his heart,
missing something he'd never had.
With their mother,
they buried their father's soul.
They buried her in earth,
but daddy buried himself in work.
They mourned the loss of both.
The eldest took the lead,
bravely filling shoes,
years too big for him.
He was their mother,
he was their father.
He showed the crying star gazer,
their mother's place in the sky.
He sat and listened to the music
of the broken hearted singer.
He coaxed out once more the smile,
of the grim prankster.
And he filled the hole in the baby's heart,
with a piece of his own.
And then there was a hand,
gently placed on his shoulder.
The father he was devoted to,
the father he longed to be like,
had come back to him.
His father took back the shoes
that he had tried to fill.
He gazed, and he listened,
and he laughed, and he loved.
The eldest could be himself,
anything he wanted to be.
He had nothing more to worry him.
But he did not give up that worry,
once a parent, always a parent.
And Scott Tracy would never again
be a child.