saturday

The sun shines and beckons, and I pursue butterflies around the gardens. Elusive spirits that gently touch down to drink of life before paper thin wings carry them away. Fragile blooms that take to the air.

Today family visits and we soak up each other's company, the first family get together since the funeral. We touch on it with words, but not too many words, and the hole becomes visible and tangible, but it is too fresh, and we cover it with banter, not sure how to peer into this depth called "life without her". It is just over a week now, 8 days.

thursday

It is finished,

this earthly life of mom's, the burial, the service, the social, finished.

Emotions boxed in and wrapped with a cheerful countenance and tied up with a smile.

Perhaps it is the suffering that has ended that triggers relief that produces thankfulness.

My heart has, mercifully, not yet caught up with my mind.

Grief will untie the smile and rip off the cheerfulness and unbox the sorrow.

But not yet.

The daisies dance cheerfully in the garden not missing their kin that were picked for the grandgirls to place on oma's coffin. Mercy.

mom

Mom was taken home yesterday and is clothed in white.

She knows no more tears, no more pain.

We prayed that she might be released from her struggle.

We begged God to take her home.

Thank you Father.

Dearest mother, as she lay struggling to breathe and I kneeled by her bed with tears streaming down my face, she reached for a tissue and wiped my eye and said, "Ach, lievert" and comforted me who should have been comforting her. She was mom for a short moment again, and I the child.

The reality needs to be tucked away for another day, it just can't be faced yet.

It rained tonight, a refreshing down pour after weeks of oppressive heat. The hydrangeas are in bloom. One stood in a vase beside her bed. My garden is full of them. They are renewed by the rain.

hope

Sadness and fear linger under the surface, covered by cheerfulness. Somewhere inside hope and faith also live sometimes hidden by sorrow. As mom fails the thought of really, actually doing without her looms large. How I love this gentle woman, this lady who gave all for her family. How I will miss our mother when I can't talk to her anymore, when I can't see her eyes light up when she sees her children or grandchildren. How sad I will be for dad when he carries on without her.
And yet, when comfort seems elusive it rests, quietly and beautifully in words of scripture and words of encouragement.

"Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

2 Corinthians 4:16-18

july 18th

The God of all creation is the God of us all and the God of a tiny sick mother and I have to entrust her to His care. Yet sadness hangs heavy around me and each time I take leave of her I wonder if it is the last time, and I know that one of these days it will be. I take her thin face into my hands and kiss it and tell her I love her and I smile at her, yet my heart feels anxious and dragged down with sorrow. And she smiles at me at tells me she loves me. And all I want to do is weep.

sisters

These are the girls turned women who share my genes and share my love for our parents. These are the best friends who share my memories and share the dreams for our children and families. It is refreshing to be able to laugh and cry together and understand completely.

Sisters, what a blessing!

july 17th

Special days are the days that make you stop and wonder where the days disappear to. Quietly six slips into seven for this reserved little chap. In a time when so much of my thoughts are taken up with mom's illness it is good to be thankful for the life that blossoms in this home.

july 17th

When I turn around the hummingbird whooshes to this blossom, and I have been unable to capture it. Patience.

friday's moon

Quietly, in the early hours, with the Book on my lap, and the steam rising from my coffee cup, I watch them flit in and out, this parade of life in feathered form.

sons and mothers

He said to me this morning, our little Marten, "When I am big I will have a huge property and a guest house, and when you are old you can live in it, and I will take care of you".

Today, I am alive and well, and have a list of chores and activities that need attending, while my own mom lies quiet in a hospice bed. Today, Uncle Marten returns to his own family and his own life. No Diggory's apple was given or would have been taken. Only precious time and selfless love and a wanting to take care of one's mother. Somehow it just seems impossible and so sons and daughters do what they can but it never feels like it is enough. And mom lies quiet in her bed and loves her children back.

canada day