Some things are hard to do.

This is so different than when I lost my dad. My mom was alert, oriented, engaged. Robbie and I left and went home, actually, she told us we could go home-it was about 6:45. Within an hour I got the call that she had coded. Actually, Robbie and I talked about it. It is as if all her loose ends were tied up, she had a great day, she sent us home. It is not that she passed from an affliction, it is that she left in peace. As Father Bart said after listening to our story, maybe my dad came for her.

I picked these clothes out for my mom. The pink pants are what she called her comfy pants---they are pink velour, the kind you reach for when you have been out and on your feet all day, when you want to take off your shoes and relax. And a tshirt from Dillard's with the double trim around the neck. And her new Birkenstocks I bought in Berlin. Couldn't decide on the socks. Do you know she had a sock drawer with nothing but my handknits? 21 pair. 21. I had no idea I had knitted that many. She really liked them. I liked knitting them. The ones on the left--they are in Cascade Fixation. The ones on the right are STR ltwt, the colorway is one of my hand dyes from Sock Camp. They are Cat Bordhi's Personal Footprints, I call them the "Purl When you Feel Like It" design. I gave them to her for her birthday last June. The prayer shawl in the background I call her Grandma Auza shawl because I bought the yarn when I went to Grandma Auza's funeral in Flagstaff. I knitted it for her that same summer. It is a rectangle in a simple basketweave. It is the first shawl I made for her. I know she used it because it smells like Youth Dew. I left my Myrna Stahman shawl in Show Low that summer for her to use---she later told me "If you want to make me a shawl like that, it would be OK". It gives me comfort to know these things will be there with her. There is a big hole in my life now, but these knitted things contain little bits of my soul that will stay with her forever.