I Am Like Fire-The Transformation of a Lifetime

Sweetness 08/15/2011

Sweet potato pies. Red Kool-Aid ® be it strawberry or cherry flavored.  Her dog Duchess.  Kool ® cigarettes that she would fashionably burn, occasionally smoke, and eventually dropped from her repertoire.  A fiery temper if someone hurt the people she loved, and unflinching loyalty to support to the same.  Playing in her closet that went on forever, not realizing its length was attributable to its location under the hallway stairs (see photo).  Recuperating from my broken ankle 30 years ago in the same recliner my grandpa used to sit in that she kept in her apartment.  My mother doing her grocery shopping for and with her, and some of the quirky habits she developed as she gracefully aged, such as stuffing facial tissue in nearly every purse she owned “just in case” she needed them or ducking down a different aisle in the supermarket.  Grape jelly sandwiches so full that the bread crumbled.  Attending my baccalaureate graduation in Texas, flying on an airplane for the first time to see one of a few college graduates in my family at that juncture.  A delicate flower in the nursing home where she spent the last 7 years of her life, those final hours when my seminarian friend came to bless her and I heard her speak two words, the last two she would speak in this world, “Thank you.” And the unspeakable beauty of the nearly wordless exchange between my aunt and mother with a love that permeated the room in those final hours.  They are 23 years apart in age, so when their parents died, my aunt became mother to my mom.

My Aunt Marie, my dear sweet Aunt Marie, laid down the mantle of this life three years ago today.  She inspires me now to stay the course in the face of difficulty, and yes, she is oh so sweet (did I say that already?).  Although she was not Catholic, how fitting that the enduring matriarch of my family died on the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, mother par excellence.  I see a lot of her in my mother now, more so than when I was younger, and what a sight to behold.  May I run as well as she did, so that my life reflects the timeless beauty in her and my mother that is summed up in this piece I re-wrote especially for her:

New life, new life
The melody is true
“I make all things new!”
Eternity is come,
Singing to me
The unending song of love and life.
No tear and sigh
No question why
They have their yes in him.
I am free, and I am whole,
and now I am home.
New life, new life
The melody is true:
I am made new.
And when the time comes,
you will be too.
Well done, Aunt Marie, well done.

©2008, Roxanne E. Barnes.  All Rights Reserved.