New Painting-She Knows Love

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.