Don’t speak to me about the austere & lonely offices of love,
until you’ve bathed your mother’s bare & trembling flesh with your own
unworthy palms. Naked as the days we were born, her body the mold & echo
of mine, only faded, in time. In this strange & striking way,
I have known a mother’s love. Knit together,
we are the night-blooming cereus, Christ-in-the-manger.
I did not reckon for this. No one requests baptism á la hotel shower.
Nevertheless. We are here. We live, we love, we build.

Wilted-wet-lashes sweep the sweet horizon of her cheek,
thin-blue-veins flit across her lids, wisps of silver hair hang limply,
curling down around the knobs of her bony spine. She sighs,
then is quiet, still– delicate, fragile, frozen. A few borrowed
moments of peace envelop & soothe her frenzied mind.
There is life here, there is beauty here, still, even in these,
dark webs of lack & loss lifted from the loom.

Thank you, God, for the gift of glory,
even in this, the suffering you permit. Who can hope
to understand the ebb & flow of God’s gravity? Not I.
Who can resist its tug, mysterious and heavy
as the weeping veil of the sea, with all of its salt?
Not I. Finally, I let my tears fall, where they meet & mix & flow
with this earthly deluge, drainward, cleansing this precious
bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood.
Open your eyes, mother, let us revel– in these,
the haunted-yet-holy waters of our shared soul.

I surrender.
I surrender.
I surrender.

             This poem came to me on the day that I put my mother into a nursing home. I say “came to me” because I truly feel like it wasn’t just “me” writing it. I was three-months-a-Christian at that point, to the day. As I started writing, words and images flowed together. I only organized them, for coherency. I had an odd feeling about the phrase “knit together,” so I Googled it. That’s when I discovered that there are Biblical undertones to it. I did not consciously intend those— but they fit! Also, the “night-blooming cereus” image just popped into my head. Upon Googling, I discovered the other name for it— “Christ-in-the-manger.” The cereus is a desert flower that blooms at night. Some species only bloom once. A perfect image to convey the rarity, beauty, and brevity of my mother’s time here on Earth. Again, I cannot claim sole authorship— the Holy Spirit inspired me on this one.

             The poem describes a scene that occurred the night before, when I rented a hotel room and bathed her. The image of “God’s gravity” came to me as a way to say that I didn’t understand the situation, but that if it was God’s will, then I accepted it. Having matured somewhat in my faith, I now view this as flawed thinking. This is important to understand— God is not the only spiritual force operating in this world. There’s a whole plethora of powers and principalities whose aspirations are evil. Since realizing that, I’ve learned not to “blame things” on God. Understanding this has been helpful for my healing and learning to trust Him. (For a bonus poem, Google “austere & lonely offices of love” and read about “Those Winter Sundays”).

For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

— Psalm 139:13