time since... seven months

My package would arrive a few weeks before Christmas. Brightly wrapped and heavy-solid... to be opened before the holiday. A Jim Shore figurine from my mother. Bittersweet as I put them out this year wondering if I should go pick up a new one to add to the collection as if it is all the same. I decide no... I read a prayer that a woman uttered at the loss of her child:

God, we thank You for the gift...
You know what a treasure she has been for us.
It is painful to part with her physical presence.
Bless the hurt in our hearts as we trudge through each day.
Grace us with awareness...

I soak up the words of Terry Tempest Williams; she has been through this shattering,

Who will give up this world?
The catalog of forms is endless.
No one sees everything.
I am looking for a way to vocalize, perform, act out, address the commonly felt crises of my time. These are spiritual exercises.
I went back for the disembodied arms with the hands clasped in prayer, but they were gone.
Fragmentation and breaking up is indeed the essence of the twentieth century.
We are now living in the twenty-first century.
We have no compass to reorient ourselves.
Memory is redundant.
didn't we plant the seeds?
weren't we necessary to the earth?
There is an old saying that when you change your life, you also change your ideas.

I listen to a thousand tiny pieces, and lift the treasured mementos {the seeds} and tenderly arrange them on the table and anxiously await the return of the light. {the new ideas} I am filled with love. Merry Christmas Mom.