One Moment

I saw my mama tonight. She's back up in her little memory unit apartment, finally out of skilled nursing. She's not doing well, as far as you and I would consider "doing well" but she is warm and clean and nestled in a nice bed. When I went up there tonight around 6:15, she was tucked in and had been given fluids. I went in her room and put my hand on her cheek (she has the softest skin of anyone I've ever met), and she opened her eyes and smiled at me and shrugged her shoulder up to kind of hug my hand with her shoulder and cheek. It was so beautiful. In the smallest gesture there was this unbelievable amount of love and history. I felt like, "wow, she knows me and she loves me." I've been working it out in my head; the whole quality-of-life thing and the the-body-is-merely-our-shell, and the she-needs-to-go-hang-out-with-my-dad-now thing. But in that moment I just wanted to holler, Don't Go! because I wanted to be able to keep that feeling going my entire wild and precious life. Because that mom love is irreplaceable. Instead of hollering, I sat her up, asked one of the nice CNA's for a health shake and a small ice cream, and I fed her. Spent an hour sitting on her bed, hanging out, with my arm around my mom. This picture is from about four years ago. She had been memory sick for a few years but was still very much alert and coherent. But, and I use a literary term here, there was a bit of fore shadowing in her face. What I like is the look in Jay's eyes and how he looks up at her. Here's what I think; I think I've been very lucky in the amount of moments I've had in my life that contained love.

The following quote is called The Cost of Living......

To love. To be loved. To never forget your own
insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable
violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you.
To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty
to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or
complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never
power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand.
To never look away. And never, never, to forget.
--Arundhati Roy