Smoke and Ash

 My Mother has become my Child.

Our labor has been difficult and painful. I have had to bare down, and breathe, and ride the contractions.

Eventually, We Arrived.

There are so many shadows inside me. Seeking safe passage to Light. She has helped me to see them. All the labels and longings, false notions and great expectations I've heaped onto Her are exhausting.

I Released them all with the final push of Her birth inside me.

These words I write with are really quite impossible carriers of Truth. They are inadequate containers. They are too many and too few and not nearly enough.

Let's just take the word "Mother"

 for instance.

So provocative.

Such an Invocation.

Holding only the meaning of He Who Speaks It to She Who Hears It to We Who Inhabit It.

There are initials we use that are also conductors of vast emotion.

At times they evoke great waves of tender compassion. 

They are initials such as:

 CHF.  MS.  ALS.

But my Mother has C.O.P.D. 

It is not so much the frightening oppression of the disease itself I seek to shield her from. It is the receding of the Wave. The dry shores where Compassion should flow that are barren and cold.

At the mere mention of its name all mercies are withheld. And the judgement Swift.

 My very bones can feel it.

My Mother is 85. 

She was born in the 30's. 

Of the 19's. 

Her great great grand daughter will one day see this as wonder and mystery.

"Do you smoke?", they ask at each and every E.R. visit. Another set of initials. Invoking assumed reverence. On someone's part.

"Do you smoke?" Their words ring out in accusation, even as they fill the breathless space She occupies. My Mother's whole body, weak and wheezing, seems to lower itself in shame as she answers. 

The E.R. staff appear to move a bit more slowly then. Their concern no longer palpable.

When my Mother lights a cigarette She is carried up in Smoke. She forgives herself and is momentarily, though temporarily and at great peril, Free. She lingers in the corridors of memory. She is 17 again. Dancing with my Father. Safely held in arms that adore Her. Free of all that shall come to pass. Safe in arms that will see well  passed it. To the innocence of Her Truth.

My Father's Ash has Become the Great Lakes.

I sit with Him often, and He sends me only Waves of great Mercy and Tenderness.

And Together, We Pray

To the God of Smoke and Ash

For safe passage through The Fire.



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