My Mama Chris

She is stubborn and determined and beautiful and tired from her journey. She has the most beautiful skin I have ever seen on a woman. At 80+ years of age she is still a pretty thing to look at. Her hair is silver and her fingernails are perfect. The index finger on her right hand is so bent from use that it looks like the back leg of a puppy. I pray I never forget that crooked finger. 

She didn't raise my daddy. But she gave life to him. The 80 some odd years she has lived on this Earth she has never known the intimacy and true touch of a "loved one" until she met her boy. Some 50 years after having given birth to him she came back and gave him life !

I guess I look at her and my daddy like a fairy tale. They are so in love with one another. Not even the normal love of a mother and child who are always together but a love born into him and thru her so strong that it searched out the other for nearly 60 years until they found one another again.

I love my daddy the way that they love each other. She opens her eyes and she is helpless. Her body has done all that it came into the world to do. Her breathing is labored and short and today she had another stroke and seizures and physically she can't do much more. It's been a hard day for her. I'd almost say the hardest of her life but I know that the hardest day was the day that she had to give my daddy, her boy away all those years ago.

I don't know a lot about what her life was before but I do know with confidence that the last 12 years that she has lived in my daddy's house have been the happiest years of her life. 


She opens her beautiful eyes now...she...her....the person who lives inside the weak and fragile body that is on the outside....my Mama Chris peeks out those eyes and with what energy she has left she sees the doctors and nurses and me even and there is an empty look on her face that only changes at the moment that my father, her baby boy, comes into her line of sight.

Right at that moment you see more than a body laying there. You see her soul. You see Love. Love in its purest form. Love so deep that I believe she won't let go. She is holding on for one more kiss and one more "I love you, momma".

There are not droves of people to line the streets of belfry when she dies. I'm not sure we will have more than a single night at the funeral home or possibly in my home to honor her life she knows so few people. I reach my hand in to hold hers to satisfy my need to touch her and my need to feel comfort but I know that she is so not used to the touch of a hand beyond the hand of my daddy's love for her that it almost feels as if she can't understand why I am holding onto her.

I can hardly contain the buckets of tears when my daddy holds her and cries while thanking her for coming to live with him 12 years ago. Telling her, trying to tell her how much he loves her.

I am setting here wishing she would go on into the next place. Why ? Why doesn't she close her eyes and let go ? But I know that the reason is the very statement that I said at the start....she is stubborn and determined !!!! And beautiful !!!

And I will forever be her stubborn and determined granddaughter !