I have known two moms in my life. When I was little, I use to think my mom was the most beautiful woman on earth. She would always be in a dress, flowered print with a thin matching belt. She was my sweetheart, my first crush. She would often tell me she had prayed to have me. I was taken by her love for me and that it came in such a beautiful woman. At 14 I veered off onto the highway to hades, on the road mostly. I eventually got married, saved at 28, had four children, raised them on Jesus and the road, became an artist, worked, bought homes and land, and lived on the road. I would see mom a few times every year. She was someone who owned a home where I could always crash, rest and my family be well fed. The children grew up, moved away, got married, had our grandchildren, and began their own life on the road. I returned to knowing mom for the second time. I hadn’t known her dearly for 50 years. I do now. She is just a shell of my original mom. Death has a stone-cold grip on her physical body and is wringing hard the life out of her. I sit with her quietly, she sleeping off and on, her body mocking my early memories of her. She was the most beautiful woman I knew, and she loved me. My mom is mostly a living body now, limited beyond imagination, a sliver of who she was so recently ago. She is the two moms I know best, the one when I was just a child and now the one who is just a wisp, a tiny fragment of my old: crush.
No comments:
Post a Comment