Mama
Inspired Writings By MaryBeth Scalice
Dear Hearts, Sept 5th 2019
I am writing in haste having not yet packed. Tomorrow I see my mama. How crazy and adorable she can be. Although she knew months ago of my visit, our phone conversation is largely about her desire that I hurry home. It is inconsequential that I have never lived in Florida.
Mama Awakens Love in Me
Inspired Writings By MaryBeth Scalice
Good Morning Dear Hearts,
Florida’s summer is has no wind, but damp warm sheets wrap you in ways that set your muscles to droop as your step out of the a/c into thickened soup. Still the sun shines resolutely, as if God were beaming through the dog days giving us pause, asking us to relax, keeping us all from rushing. We sweat even in our slow, deliberate walks from the car to the apartment, hoping we can shower soon. Except for Mom, who is not happy taking showers, and most of all unhappy as the sun sets. Then shadows fall across her face and the light in her eyes dims with fear. She asks, please stay with me. Please don’t go. Of course I can stay until she is calm and ready for sleep. However tomorrow comes and I will not be here to comfort her. I ask, What then Jess? How do I leave a mother, a sister, a friend in fear?
Forgetting and Remembering with Mama
Inspired Writings By MaryBeth Scalice
Dear Hearts,
I have been with my Mama in Florida for a few days. If you have been reading my notes, you already know Mom suffers with dementia, forgetting so thoroughly, she locked her aide out of the house and called the police. Three times she called for help, fearing an intruder. I am grateful she opened the door for me. I wonder what makes her remember some of us, some of the time and not others. What makes her open the door to some, but believe the rest are dangerous strangers.
My Mother, Mary Walking Out of this Life
Inspired Writings By MaryBeth Scalice
My mother, Mary is happy. A part of her mind recognizes she is blessed, her needs met despite the challenges of a weakened body, despite the nuisance of disappearing thoughts. That part of her mind is like a magnificent moth-eaten dress. Memories, words, ways of relating have vanished. The dress is hard to wear now. There are more holes than threads.
Who is my mother, Mary, without the story of her life? She feels friendless because friends are forgotten. She feels afraid; what was once familiar is now alien. She feels ignorant. Cooking, cleaning, driving, accomplishing so many creative things used to be easy. Now she says, I’m old and stupid. She has forgotten how to live. Perhaps more troubling, she has forgotten herself.
Hospice Christ
Inspired Writings By MaryBeth Scalice
These words rise up.
She who has given a moment to God finds herself embraced in the arms of The Everlasting.
I have given this pause, one little thought offered on the altar, more of a cry for love than love extended, and yet It opens, even now in the midst of pain and death, the One Perfect Thought which I do not think, but feel as the enveloping Love of God.
All my little prayers and meditations appear before me like a handful of sand on a vast unchartered Beach. God is infinite possibility no matter where I look, and the whole Vision of His Love overwhelming with beauty and strength. I am mindful that each tiny granule, like each loving Thought shared, has its perfect place, indwelling in God. I am mindful that the prayers and meditations together are one Power.
The Last Days
Inspired Writings By MaryBeth Scalice
I lose count,
of days, of money,
of calories.
The latter may seem trifle.
But in the mental maze of
small mind it has been
an abacus.
When the Body is Gone
Inspired Writings By MaryBeth Scalice
We rise into the blue mantle of sky. She invites us to soar, to aim these silver wings toward home. I notice the higher we climb, the greater I fall. My heart sinks. Mama’s ashes have been ceremoniously put in the crypt. Her life celebration is complete. We melted our derriere’s working to empty her condo, to finalize her affairs, to clean up after her life. These the endless tasks that end all other tasks.
There has been no time for writing, for phoning, for thinking or feeling, only the drone of doing and my absorption in her stuff. I suppose that’s the way of mourners. It’s what we do when the body is gone. Each day I press to be truly helpful, scratching the tasks off my list. Each day I am discouraged, more for us to sift through.
Eulogy
Inspired Writings By MaryBeth Scalice
It is the Christmas season, a time of rebirth, the ending of the long labor of advent, of waiting. Within us we carried the seed of Our Father, making of our lives fertile ground for His Plan, His becoming in the world, as the birth of Christ. We have offered our hearts as His Womb — our emotional, broken and impatient hearts, a dwelling place seemingly too small and insignificant to bear the potential of God. We quickly learn our bodies are an impossible, impoverished hovel for the child He glorifies. Like Mary, the Mother of Jesus, we understand our humanity is incapable of holding the magnanimity of What God desires to bring forth. But on our lips we pray, Let it be done unto me according to your Word .This season our journey to become hosts to God has required we walk a pre-requisite path, a path of dying to self, that Christ might be born.