Red tagged me late last week and asked me to recycle a post from my blog. The post below was written on my European Adventure site as Dev and I were preparing for our trip to Greece and my beloved Mama was in the last stages of dementia. For you, gentle readers, I ask you to read this post first and then follow up with my first entry, here, written in January 2007.

Mama,
there are moments
during night’s final yawn
when I can feel your warm breath
tickle my cheek.

I extend my arms only to embrace darkness.

More than anything,
I want to lay my head inside your mouth
and be swallowed whole.

I love what I do not have and
you are so far.

My final meeting concerning Mama’s care took place yesterday morning on Great Thursday. While we’re away, Mama’s medical team will keep in touch with us via cell phone or e-mail.

It is on this day that Greek households around the world dye their Easter eggs red. Only last year, Dev and I spent Great Thursday driving around the various Mediterranean delis in Victoria searching for the appropriate packets of dye so that we’d have red eggs for Pascha.

On this day, there were no dyeing of eggs, only tears.

Mama is now receiving “comfort care” as she is in the late stages of her dementia. While I met with the hospital administrator, Mama’s nurse came in and asked if she could take the chicken to visit with yia-yia. I followed soon after.

Words fall wingless as she is able to only mimic what is said.

I love you, Mama.

I love you, Mama.

Look at the chicken.

Chicken.

Mama, forgive me.

Forgive … me.

How could this happen?
How did this happen?

Is this what happens,
when you pray for a Christian and peaceful end to your life?

Mama’s medical team reassures me that it is OK to travel - that we should travel, now, while there is time. And so today, on our Great Friday, the most holiest of days, Dev and I continue on with our plans. I pack in silence; Dev completes his errands.

Mama, forgive me.