BOUQUETS OF COLOR MADE HER SMILE

Acrylic on canvas, 20 x 16 IN.

It’s strange the things you remember when your parents pass. It’s equally as strange the many things in your everyday life that take on a new tone, an odd sacred quality.

When my mom passed, as we were making the arrangements for her service, the pastor at my childhood church recalled that I write. So, he asked me to compose something for the back of her funeral bulletin. He gave me the deadline of noon the following day for the printers. No matter what one is assigned to write, to have an unexpected piece ready for publication in less than 24 hours is a tight assignment… much less a writing in honor of your recently departed Momma Bear. Not surprisingly, it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever written, at least with my father’s obituary there was some structure to doing that so I had a starting point. But, with my mom, it was a blank page with a blank form, coming from a daughter whose feelings were somewhat blank because I was still in shock.

So, I sat outside on the back porch, overlooking her beloved gardens with my computer in my lap. It was barely a week since she’d been gone, early April in Texas. The flowers had yet to bloom but the buds were full from the amaryllis near the kitchen door to the miniature roses on either side of the pool to the crepe myrtle along the back fence. I found my words in that landscape. Here’s an excerpt of her poem I wrote:

My mom loved her backyard, all the flowers she knew when to plant and when to prune. She loved entertaining and decorating for every season… but, when I found myself stumbling most to give her passing a voice, it was her burgeoning flowers that spoke to me. This piece reminds me of that moment.