She Knows Love
mixed media on 20" x 16" canvas
My mother’s spirit inhabits this painting. I choose to remember mother’s beauty,
her cool hands on my brow. I choose to remember the light of her soul. Since all
memories are fabrication, revisions of the mind, I choose memories of love.
They are the only ones worth nurturing.
Mother was stylish and beautiful and my dad
adored her. Like teenage
lovers, my parents
were inseparable for
over 65 years.
In
2010, we took mother to the hospital at dawn so she could say
good-bye to my dad, who died after a fall. In
the hospital room, I watched my mother cry and call his name. I gave her time.
There was no need to stop or change the process or save mother from her
feelings. I watched her touch dad’s hair and repeatedly peek beneath the sheets
to make sure the body belonged to her husband.
Mother slipped her hand in his. For the very first time, he
didn’t squeeze his fingers around hers. An hour passed.
“Is it time to go?” mother asked. No tears fell from her
eyes, though her hands shook.
My husband and I wheeled mother down the hall and out to the
sidewalk. The sun was rising as I waited with mother while my husband walked
towards the parking lot.
“He’s really gone?” mother asked me.
“Yes,” I said.
“I didn’t kiss him! I have to kiss him. I always kiss him
good-night.”
When my husband pulled up in the car, I told him we wanted to
go back to the room. He re-parked the car and joined us again. I entered the
room first to be certain dad was undisturbed. Then I waved in my husband, who
pushed mother in her wheelchair. He pushed her to the side of the bed. We both
helped mother stand, but she couldn’t reach dad’s face.
We pushed mother to the other side. I held her as she leaned
forward to kiss dad on the lips.
“Claudia! He’s still warm!”
Now tears flowed down mother’s face. She made sure the sheet
covered his entire body.
“What are we going to do?” she asked as her face reddened. “I
was supposed to go first!” Mother leaned over once again and kissed dad on the
lips a second time. “I’ll see you soon!” she said with conviction.
“Claudia, what are we going to do?” she asked again.
“We’re going to let him go and you can follow later when you
are ready,” I told her.
Mother was ready five months later. She lay on her bed in the
residential care home. Frail as a sparrow, she took her final breath as I
whispered in her ear: “He’s waiting for you! Go with love. Let go. Let love
find you.”
And she did.
© Claudia Rose, Ph.D.
