Last visit with Mother

Mother was dying. What could I do?

All I did was reminisce about the good, good days when the sun warmed the earth ever so gently, the air was clean and clear, smelling of sweet in the mountains, salty by the sea. Then I walked the sands for hours, never stepping in oil or on glass.

There were treasures galore, things that didn’t cost a penny. Mine for free; everybody’s free! Free for the looking, the taking.

Mother watched as I played in the surf and picked up jewels—pieces of abalone shells, admiring their subtle, soft rainbows gleaming in the sun. There were bits of jellyfish dashed ashore from which I could always imagine a face. People lost at sea?

The high mountain, Yosemite, up which I scrambled, into the very mouth of heaven. I beheld the bejeweled valley below dressed in apple green (crisp as a starched shirt), India green (dark, brooding), Persian green (swank, bordering blue), pine green (so deep you inhale the scent of needles gently brewing in the sun), forest and olive greens.

It was there that Mother spoke as I gazed at white slabs of polished granite, over which icy waters danced and fell. Mother intoned: “This too shall pass away.”

Mother was dying. Gone her lovely ways, her maddening demands by day, the gifts of her silent, bewitching nights. The great amount of human pollution, the ozone layer gone. The earth had become hot. Mother was dying. Mother Earth. CONSTANCE P. DURKIN

Fort Smith