Chapter One

My mother loved all her children the best she could. She was beaten by life but would not give up. She wrote down on a piece of paper in her pain-wracked script just weeks before she died, "Oh Lord, help me ... and others too!" Earlene Davis Brandon, my mom had tucked away in her drawer by her recliner a white handkerchief that she had also written down these words, "prayer hankie." Mom would call all of us, her children from time to time with her one link to the outside world, her phone and she would speak to us for as long as we would allow. I now wish I would have just sat down and listened to her more and took the time to just chat. When we are young, we always have to hurry up and be some other place and will take out time to talk to the old folks later. But sometimes later doesn't come. When we are old, we just have to sit and wait ... and wait. I am sure we all reflect on the what-could-have-been.

But nothing is accomplished by looking back. We must live and go on as the butterfly. I remember the last summer before grief gripped my heart; there was a mimosa tree on the side yard of my house next to the laundry room window. I could look out each day that summer and watch all the butterflies fluttering around the pink wisps of flowers. I heard my neighbor lady's voice from her own window call to me, "Look at all those butterflies! Have you seen so many?" No I never had or have. I believe it was God's comforting beauty to help blanket the pain coming upon my soul. And the sight of that beauty still does so. Like the butterfly, my short time here is fragile and temporal.