Our formative years shape our perspective and the culmination of our experiences spark the creative juices.

Sometimes the juices they spark are as sweet as honey and nectar … or as tart as a key lime … as sour as a pickle … but sometimes they are bitter.

So so bitter.

May usually has a very positive influence on my mood despite being the anniversary month of the death of my older sister 48 years ago and my mother eleven years ago.

I think May has got me in my feels. A little too much I might add because my emotions are running the gamut friends!! Not in a creative kind of way either.

I just miss them. I miss my mother.

And.

And I find myself rehashing the days that sparked a few of my creative juices.

Today I was going over that stormy day eleven years ago- the day that inspired the following poem.

The Last

The last bit of sorrow swelling

from closed eyes…

sitting as if waiting…

near the temple at the outer corner…

The storm outside was magnificent!

Sheets of rain surrounded us like walls of glass, but we broke through at 90 miles per hour.

Rolling thunder rattled the windows, as if mumbling words

only we could understand.

Brilliant shocks of light

from every direction lighted the way;

each dazzling strike followed by ostentatious paternal claps that said, Enough! Take my hand – hurry!

The thick charcoal sky parted in bilious shades of gray like the Red Sea…

And I saw…

The last moment –

the last millisecond

the last breath.

The last bit of sorrow 

and pain

and worry.

The last tear sitting –

as if waiting

near the temple

at the outer corner of her left eye.

I caught it…

I watched it soak into the edge

of a paper napkin and sealed it in a tiny bag.

No words were necessary.

She was out of earshot –

out of the audible range

of the childlike pleadings of stay.

She was at last where she longed to be;

the two of them as one again.

Somewhere safe above the storm,

laughing like children and holding hands.

It was the last time I saw

her and daddy together.

*It was the worst spring storm I can recall. I had barely made it home before the bottom fell out and I was enjoying the heavenly show. I know it seems ‘abnormal’ but I do love a good storm. This one was raging an hour’s drive in any direction.

I was on the phone talking to my youngest sister when the doctor called.

I had just told her our mother was alert and talking, she looked good and her condition was stable. Moments later the doctor was contradicting me.

“Your mother went into cardiac arrest blah blah blah. I was not aware of the DNR blah blah blah. We are in the process of trying to restart her heart, doing CPR blah blah blah. Do you want us to continue blah blah blah?”

There was no problem with the connection yet his gentle voice came in shrill broken fragments. I had him [the doctor] on one line, my youngest sister on another and I was frozen between them. I must have asked, “what should I do?”

I recall my sister choking out the words “let her go.” 

My husband had the truck ready before I could hang up the phone.

Taken from Getting Me Back (The Voices Within)

The photo above is where I laid flowers on the memorial today; the memorial I made for myself – where I planted the last tear that I mentioned in the poem.

Purple was her favorite color. There is only a small red sandstone (from her native east Texas) marking the teardrop’s final resting place.