Visiting my mom can be a traumatic event in my day. Death's heinous grip has such a terrible hold on her body. I once was so in love with her as only a three-year-old can love, completely. No one was as beautiful as my mom. And then I knew her as the most robust of humans, never tiring, ultimately organized, kept an immaculate home, raised four prodigals, got us dressed for Sunday, cleaned the baseboards of our modest homes, canned everything in the fall and filled her most precious gift, a 6-foot freezer. And I knew her as utterly grief-stricken at how I turned out. And then I knew her great relief at how I turned out. And then I knew her orphaned, and then widowed, and then, and the last time I knew her as who she always was, I knew her alone in an empty home filled with 80 years of memorabilia. Our trial trail is now over rocky and thorny ground. She has become a translucent shell of herself. She is almost, and absolutely still now. Nothing who she was except the sapphire blue of her eyes swimming in confused and frightened whys. She is as ancient as humans can become, a pajamaed shroud. She is a reliquary of The Ancient of Days, a worn and weathered Edened oak, washed up on the shore of her end times—the cradle of her Holy Spirit. She is my last mom, the House of the Lord for me. The one I will know till her end. She has no equal.
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