Unless It's Not Too Late

We are the mothers

and the daughters of the mothers

who are growing old and vanishing

into the house of their aloneness.

And they are dying.

Not of old age,

but because of their disappearing habitat.

One that knows how they matter,

one that cares and puts them at the center

and places children of all ages on their lap,

and comes to the sun of their hearts when the storms of life are too much to bear.

One that has time to have tea,

to look at pictures that are actual photographs,

labeled and carefully placed in shoe boxes in the trunk in her living room

for ease of retrieval and safe keeping.

One that honors the wisdom of the stories

that can only come from the endurance of years,

from a multitude of loves and all kinds of losses,

from decades of dreams and dishes,

doldrums and disappointments,

and destiny playing itself out more completely.

One that listens well,

not out of pity,

but rather,

enraptured with the possibility

of mining the treasures that are buried here

in her stories, in her years

and offering them up like pearls on strings of gold

to a friend

or the woman at the store

who looks lost in herself.

We are the mothers

and the daughters of the mothers,

who are growing old and dying,

and we are afraid.

So, like hungry scavengers we desperately hunt

for magnitudes of significance

because the hallowed ground of elderhood

has become a barren landscape,

void of legacy,

scoured by the breath of vanishing grace

of those forgotten

and left to wilt before their time.

And this is where we

and our sisters

and our daughters too

are destined to go

unless it’s not too late…