Her Hands

I sit alongside my mother’s bed
As her life draws to a close,
Her body, frail and growing weak,
Can mostly only doze.

She stirs and reaches in the air
To grasp at invisible strands;
She settles back and sleeps again
And I gaze upon her hands.

Those hands, now wrinkled so with age,
The nerves, dead with disease:
So long she’s struggled to perform
Tasks which once came with such ease.

I think of all those hands have done
Throughout her many years
As child, wife, mother, and grandmom,
Through laughter and through tears.

While growing up it was her chore
The chicken’s neck to wring
For family dinners. (I’m amazed
She still could eat the thing!)

The years passed by and she became
The one we all called Mother
The “snapshot memories” of those hands
Pile one upon another.

Making cookies, sewing clothes,
Putting laundry on the line
Washing dishes, wrapping gifts,
Making homemade Valentines.

Soothing in the dark of night
If her kids were sick, had fears,
(But yes, those hands gave spankings too
To those same “sweet” children’s rears!)

Rolling our hair with bobby pins –
In the sixties, your hair had to flip! –
Five daily sack lunches, keeping (mostly!) straight
Who got mustard, who, Miracle Whip!

Though sometimes I pushed my mom’s hands away
In typical mom-daughter strife,
I know that I’ll miss the special touch
My mother’s hands had on my life.

I reach for her hand and clasp it in mine
And thank God in heaven above
That though these hands still, my heart will still know
My mother’s sweet labors of love.
Copyright 9/11/2008 Mocha with Linda