I am closer to her today than ever I was in all the days before.
Born during the depression, she accepted it as a birth right and never quite cast it off.
She strove for perfection and happiness with equal fervor,
Two unreconcilable opposites, she finally settled, in fear, for the middle no-man’s land,
Which would never give her the satisfaction of either.
Reproducing mini-me’s was the generational standard, but she should have resisted,
As none of her brilliant muted talent lay in seeing the needs of others.
When tragedy struck, she fell into a bottle of chablis blanc.
And she swam in it, without a life preserver, for decades.
It kept her gasping for air, but enjoying the all-consuming distraction.
Yet like determined daisies raising themselves up despite the pounding summer rain,
Her seedlings struggled and grew tall in sunlight pools they found all by themselves.
She watched them bleary eyed from the smoky corner,
Mumbling the bitter catch phrases her own mother had taught her,
While dreaming of the life she thought she should have had, but never had the guts to try.
Unable to enjoy the joy of others, she schemed and designed her life-evading tactics.
Lashing out, she aimed to strike down any hint of joy in those daring to be near her.
Her hopelessness, sourced from an angst-filled hole of seeming never-ending depth,
All her life, she was confused, miserable, sad, pained, hopeless, lost and scared,
So she sat and sat and sat and sat and sat.

But then Love came in.

Unexpectedly free, joyously raised and loosed from the shackles of fear,
She opened her eyes to the love that had inexplicably always been there!
Now feeling a happy puzzling acceptance of a Love she’d somehow forgotten.
Love she never saw through the unyielding thunder clouds that had covered her eyes;
Love she never felt through the iron protective suit she put on with her toddler shoes;
Love she never heard through the deafening thunder of her own terrified voice.
But now finally seeing, feeling, and hearing what she’d missed her whole life.
Relief flooding through, laughter bubbling up, as she discovered this truth.
Letting go of all the wasted years, irrelevant and forgotten like last night’s dream.
And simply keeping hold of the Love as the only thing to know as real.
Our hearts connect now, in peace and secret coded communion.
Learning lessons together as we go through our days here.
Being freed in forgiveness and loosed to openhearted acceptance
We thrive in Love and laugh together at inside jokes that no one need get but us.
We are closer today than we’ve ever been before,
Now she’s been dead for years.