Her Eyes....

We repose in a little centrally located sitting room. The sofa is vinyl and less than comfortable. I know why it's vinyl even if she doesn't. She gazes off into an unknown distance unseeingly. Her sense of Presence is off kilter more than a little. We sit hip to hip, broken heart to broken heart, tattered from this world worn out. I imbue her with me, as I've always done. It's what I do. It's who I am. Love. All that she is now is certainly not all she has ever been. I feel her Stories in layered, intricate compositions, without words, stronger than her voice belies. She can't find her Words. This is the hardest for me. Our LoveAffair with words has been One precious thing that has bound us one to the other. 

Two nurses escort a hunched over resident hurriedly down the hallway. The woman, distressed, murmurs in earnest fervor, "DammitDammitDammit!" The nurses cajole and reassure her along. We FEEL it all. Mom looks at me. I look at Mom. She raises her eyebrows as expressively, as familiarly as ever she once did before The Strokes. Then we Laugh! I put my arm around her shoulder and she tries, again, to speak her thoughts but the words come out jumbled an convoluted. She scowls and tsk, tsks, shakes her head and says, "Oh, never mind! I just don't care anymore." I breathe into her frustration and say, "It's okay, Mom. It's okay. I know the words you're trying to say."  "You do," she asks disbelievingly? All at once, in an instant, her eyes clear and she says, "You DO, don't you?" Then, that quick, she is gone again. I quietly, whisperingly reassure her, "You don't have to care anymore. You don't have to DO anything." Then I remind her of all the years she read Wayne Dyer and she hears me like it's a Story about Someone Else. I say, "You worked so very HARD to learn to Be Here NOW....to live in the NOW." She nodded the way someone who knows just a few words of a foreign language will when they are working so hard to follow the conversation. I continue, "And NOW, here you sit from moment to moment and all you really, truly know is NOW because you won't remember this conversation in an hour or even that I was here." She leans into me and puts her head on my shoulder like she does every single time I come to visit her. She breathes in the Comfort of my arms, my Energy, my indefatigable LOVE and we Touch Souls in Merging Vibrancy, just for a moment....