Writer in the Forest

Chapter 29

On a drizzly day in March 2002, I leaned in and placed the doll beside her, turning the angel slightly inward in an embrace. Then I memorized the face that had looked on me throughout my life, our life— with wonder, love, and trust. This was the face I always looked to first for strength, for answers. These were the arms that held my babies when I was a young and nervous mother, the arms that I held steady when she was old and frail and breathless. I’ll never forget you Mom.

These last months had been a special time for us—sad, both of us knowing I would not have her to turn to for comfort, and glad, both of us proud that we had come so far in our lives and shared so much. The moment I’d dreaded was here. Courage, don’t fail me now.  I would have the dignity and strength she taught me when Grandma died. I looked away to my own daughters, standing back from the casket, their eyes brimming with tears, and knew that someday this scene would be replayed. Let the lessons begin.

Goodbye, Mom. I will carry on. It was a pitifully brief goodbye, considering all we had been through. It was all I had to say.

As I straightened and turned for the door, I looked at my brother. The pain seemed to pull at his face, drawing it downward and making his body lean unsteadily as if a great weight pressed upon it. There’s a new weight on us, now.

There once was a family that stood straight and tall. Then storms came, and we all bent the way the wind blew us. Some of us cracking, parts of us shearing off, leaving the best or the worst behind. That’s what we did.

Then I walked out into the mist, while somewhere a leaf slipped into the river and began its new journey.  I left my mother for the last time and kept going, on my own.

—End of Dancer in River. Stay tuned for the last installment of Tall Timbers Anthology – My Back Pages.—