Their Mother's Last Days

Looking upon her face, lying there, awaiting her destiny that swept her up into eternity,
We saw there a glimpse of that blessed, peaceful state in eyes that swallowed you into their calmness, their beckoning like pools of liquid love that embraced you in acceptance.
Days earlier mother’s fretting stopped replaced by this placid paradise of serenity.
Who can explain it?
Only the ones who looked and loved their mother

Days of embracing her, washing her, caressing her, now, open, accepting arms - like a new born child unable to speak but watching you closely, the one you love.
Sitting beside her, her every word held in your heart, the blessing finally comes.
You hold her hand; you touch her, want to be beside her, to lie there with her as she sleeps - your mother

Only the years will erase the pain but never this memory of God’s gift:
Her love finally given without cost, awaiting you each time you arrive to possess the loveliness of love.
You and your sister hold her to you, from one to the other as you bathe her and wash her back and clean her bottom - something you have never seen - once so private now so open to all of love - your mother

The nephew comes amidst cries and sighs.
He watches the scene, his aunts and mother, their tears wash into his own soul and he merges as one with them observing her, - his granny.
A gift she gives to this one grandson, one last time, a gesture from her heart.
And she lies there, having touched him so, and the daughters, three, - this, their mother.

And in those early hours of the final day she crosses herself over and over praying for IT to come and the chorus of her family, like angels, repeat over and over their Pater Nosters and their Hail Marys, helping their mother go to the next level where her faith has led her - home.
And the youngest, sitting there, observes her mother’s breathing slow, become heavier and heavier, and now this child weeps and cries as she watches and says her last “goodbyes”, and her sibling enters, shocked, uttering, “she’s dead” - their mother.
Crying begins, horrific howls, and beckonings, to return, one sobbing upon the other, one wrestling with love as well as un-love
And angry words of grief rebel are silenced by love’s tether.
The sister on the phone joins the mournful lament as she listens to their distant wails.
Though she is gone and taken from them she lives on in their memories of her eyes: blue pools of love, as one saw them - their mother.

And upon her bed, as the sisters’ watch, one last gift is given them - the worry wrinkles leave her face, and low and behold, a shining angel alights on her, her hair shines, too, with a youthful dew captured by these moments when all the past is left behind and eternal peace finally falls upon - their mother..

Now she’s gone but not forgotten for those memories live on within in their heart and each holds dear
a special moment with her- their mother.
Where bitterness once brewed within their bosom now resides only these memories of a radiant face that looked upon each one, arms that beckoned, and love that lingered but now reclines in a heavenly place but still they remember, will always remember that time – their mother’s last days.