Hospice

We've transitioned, The Ancestor and I. Today we met our new nurse. Today we gained a social worker of our very own. Today the promise of Mary the Chaplain was quietly spoken. Today I signed papers of change. Today the word "comfortable" took on a strangely uncomfortable tone. Today my gran cried just a little, and a grief welled up in my throat. Today was the first day of the rest of her life.

Tonight I was grateful to have the brief respite of an evening spent with bright, intelligent, good young women. Three teens and three leaders hosted a lovely dinner of appreciation for our recently-called bishopric and their wives. We folded my vintage linen napkins into soft sculpture cootie catchers, centered them on dinner plates, and topped them with salad bowls full of weedy, celebratory greens and reds. We snitched almonds. We dropped raspberries into water glasses. We tied tablecloth knots. We laughed and set up chairs and warmed lasagnas and picked out the best plates in the cupboards and ogled the cheesecake and shooed away the perpetually hungry Scouts who meet in the church building at the same hour we do. When the soirée commenced a couple of us (not I, said the shaky alto) performed dinner music for the honored guests. At one point in the evening, I think it was while Jenny was playing her Enya piano solo, I felt incredibly moved by the atmosphere in the room. Hey, this is Zion, I thought. This is it. There was such a sense of contentment, and I mean that in the very best sense imaginable. It was a rare feeling of everyone being at peace together, just full of acceptance. It shone, that moment, and what a pretty light it was. I'm thankful my dark corners got a chance to enjoy some refreshing sunshine tonight . . . thankful I get to be this kind of busy now and then.