Time for Her to Fly

I have rescued my mother, again, kidnapping her velvet bagged ashes from the seat of her broken wheelchair. They have been imprisoned for 22 months in a smelly, dark, cat litter room. Her chair is surrounded by her paper treasures being randomly eaten and soiled by resident mice. This satchel of dust was enshrined, mourned in self destructive depression by her grieving son.


Disturbingly reminiscent of the last day she was home when I came to help her as she was in pain. She was bright and happy when I first arrived, before the debilitating onslaught began again. She went into the bathroom to dress and I began to cry surveying her cluttered, impassible, life. I had been powerless to correct it, unwelcome to touch anything by my sibling who lived there, interpreting my offers, as criticism of his care. It was wrong for my beautiful mother to wheel through the maze of recycling, papers, and junk. I knew my brother was paralyzed by his obsessive compulsive brain and symbiotic life with our mother. I understood.

I had to save her, but as in all sad movies I was too late. She went to the hospital. A pilgrimage of family came to say good bye.

I look at the red pouch in front of a window at my house. She still is not all the way home, not in my earthly thinking. It is time to let her ashes dance in the wind, sing by the moonlight, grow brilliant sunflowers and fly joyfully away.