Are you afraid? In memoriam

In the last years, like a bird. Delicate, frail, angel wings slowly folding in embrace. Each time I saw her, after time away, the gentle shaking, the pale whitened hair startled me anew.

So tired. But still sharp.

Wise, but weary. Fragile, breakable, skin like frosted glass. Always able to ease, with a word, every worry I laid on her.

Three years ago today, my mother left us. Slipped away, ready to move on. Calm. Welcoming peaceful release from the simple struggle to breathe.

Gathered round her bed, we asked: Are you afraid?

No.

A thousand times, whispered:  I love you.

With a kiss to the forehead

I don’t know, for myself, the faith she held. Can’t quite imagine what it must have been like to feel assured she was leaving to join her parents, her sister, my sister, her God.

As she passed into to the night in one ICU, across town my father slept unknowing on another hospital ward. Eleven days later he would join her. Once he learned that she was gone, he no longer had the need to fight.

Perhaps he was afraid to be left behind.

Mourning aside, these past few days have been difficult.

My son confessed what I’d already suspected. After three months sober, he was drinking. Again.

Truth is the periods of sobriety have been but islands in a decade-long battle. Six or seven months total over the past nineteen.

His grandmother lived to see none of these passages of hope. She would have been heartened with every dry spell, distressed with every setback.

She worried about us all. As mothers do.

Her spirit lingers, but I miss hearing her voice.

Author: roughghosts

Literary blog of Joseph Schreiber. Writer. Reader. Editor. Photographer. View all posts by roughghosts