02/09/2025                                                                            
                                    
                                                                            
                                            🌹✨ Two Mothers Remembered – by Joann Snow Duncanson
📌 Main Poem
I had two mothers – two mothers I claim,
Two different people, yet with the same name.
Two separate women, diverse by design,
But I loved them both, for they both were mine.
The first was the mother who carried me here,
Gave birth and nurtured and launched my career.
She was the one whose features I bear,
Complete with the facial expressions I wear.
She gave me some music, which follows me yet,
Along with examples I’ll never forget.
As I got older, she somehow grew
Younger, and younger, my life-long cue.
Her love was unconditional, deep, and profound,
She nurtured my spirit, and left it unbound.
Then came the time that her mind clouded so,
I sensed that the mother I knew would soon go.
So quickly she changed and turned into the other,
A stranger who dressed in the clothes of my mother.
Oh, she looked the same, at least at arm’s length,
But she was the child now, and I was her strength.
We’d come full circle, we women three,
My mother the first, my mother the she.
And if my own children should come to a day
When a new mother comes and the old goes away,
I’d ask of them nothing that I didn’t do:
Love both of your mothers as both have loved you.
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📌 Simplification
The poet says she had “two mothers.” The first mother was the one who gave her life, love, music, and values. Later, because of Alzheimer’s, the mother changed into someone new — childlike and different, but still the same person in appearance. The poet accepts and loves both “mothers” — the one she knew before and the one who came after. She hopes her children will do the same for her someday.
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📌 Theme
Motherhood and unconditional love 💖
Transformation due to illness (Alzheimer’s) 🧠
Circle of life & role reversal 🔄
Acceptance and compassion 🌸
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📌 Summary
Joann Snow Duncanson’s Two Mothers Remembered is a touching poem about her experience with her mother’s Alzheimer’s. She describes her first mother as loving, nurturing, and inspiring. Later, illness transformed her mother into someone childlike, almost a stranger. Still, she chooses to love both mothers equally, showing that true love accepts change. The poem highlights the deep bond between mothers and children, even in the face of suffering.
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📌 Important Questions with Answers
1. Who is the poet of Two Mothers Remembered?
👉 Joann Snow Duncanson.
2. Why does the poet say she had “two mothers”?
👉 Because her mother changed due to Alzheimer’s — one before illness, and one after.
3. What qualities did the first mother give her?
👉 Life, nurturing, music, values, and unconditional love.
4. How did the mother change later in life?
👉 Her mind clouded, she became childlike, and depended on her daughter.
5. What does “a stranger who dressed in the clothes of my mother” mean?
👉 She looked the same outside, but her personality and memory had changed.
6. What role reversal happened between mother and daughter?
👉 The mother became childlike, and the daughter became the strength.
7. What does the poet ask of her children in the future?
👉 To love both versions of her, just as she loved her two mothers.
8. What disease is implied in the poem?
👉 Alzheimer’s disease.
9. What is the tone of the poem?
👉 Emotional, tender, compassionate, yet accepting.
10. What is the central message of the poem?
👉 Love should remain constant, even when illness changes a loved one.