Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Matriarchs & Mentoring Lineage


A Mothers' Day
To Remember



High in the Rocky Mountains of the American southwest, I live in a community, strongly Indio and Hispanic, which celebrates matriarchs on Mothers' Day.

It's more than duty-roses sent; it's a whole weekend of music, good meals together and family.

On Mothers' Day morning at first light, the matriarch of my family passed away at home, surrounded, embraced by her direct descendants.

She was eighty-six, funny, a marvelous storyteller, a beady-eyed appraiser of foolishness, and a retired Head Nurse.

She lives on in her great-hearted mentoring of EMT's, young nurses and in the many babies she helped birth.

She lived to know her great grandchildren, abiding as their bridge to the past. Not a common blessing in our era of broken families.

The photo above is of Herself, her ER Nurse son, and his cousin, your author.

There's a story, "War & Winnie-the-Pooh", about her Marine husband in Korea, in the first Wayfaring Traveler book.

Long ago on a Maine island, with Hospice Singers, we used to do this old-timey hymn, four-part with the different voices leading in...

"Oh Mothers, let's go down, come on down,
Down to the river to pray..."

1 Comments:

At May 17, 2017 at 6:30 PM , Blogger Mmamallama said...

May she rest in peace and rise in glory. Who is the matriarch now?

 

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