Three years today.
Three years since Mom left this earth, and somehow some memories haven’t faded at all.
They have stayed.
Not as photographs.
Not even as thoughts, really.
More like places inside me that I can still somehow step into.
I can still remember being little, sitting inside a wicker laundry basket beneath the clothesline while she hung the wash.
I can still feel the warmth of the sunshine.
The breeze slipping around me.
The sheets lifting and falling overhead, moving dreamily in the wind.
I can still smell them.
That clean, soapy scent of fresh laundry drying in warm air.
Soap and sunshine.
Freshness carried on the breeze.
The kind of scent that doesn’t simply belong to an afternoon.
It becomes part of childhood itself.
I can hear the sheets too.
The soft billowing of the fabric.
The sudden flap when the wind caught them.
The line pulling taut.
The little sounds of clothespins shifting as she reached for another piece.
And through all of it, I can hear her voice.
Singing.
Que Sera, Sera.
She sounded so much like Doris Day when she sang it.
Sometimes she would dance.
Sometimes she would call down to me.
“Tinkerbell.”
“Tinker.”
“Tink.”
I can still hear her saying it.
Those names somehow still belong to the sound of her voice.
She was my first best friend.
And today, looking back through the eyes of the woman I am now, I understand something about that memory that the little girl sitting in the laundry basket could never have known.
My mother’s life was not easy.
The truth of my mom is bigger than language.
The truth of where we journeyed together in this life is bigger than anything I could ever explain in a memorial, or perhaps even explain at all unless someone has walked a similar road.
There was struggle.
There was pain.
There was trauma.
There were things she endured that I still do not feel comfortable enough to place into other people’s hands.
Things I protect.
Things I carry quietly.
And some things I did not even begin to understand until after she was gone.
Death changed the place from which I could see her.
For most of my life, she was Mom.
Her life and mine were so intertwined that it was difficult to separate the woman she was from the woman she was to me.
But after she died, something slowly shifted.
I began to see her not only as my mother, but as an individual woman.
A woman who had once been a little girl herself.
A woman whose story began long before mine.
A woman who had dreams and disappointments, wounds and fears, joys and losses.
A woman who survived things.
A woman who carried things.
A woman whose motherhood existed alongside an entire human life that I could not fully see while I was living inside of it with her.
And there have been realizations since her death that have brought me to my knees.
Things I understand differently now.
Things I wish I had understood then.
There are parts of that season between us that I still repent over.
Places where I wish I could return with softer eyes.
Greater understanding.
More patience.
The wisdom that only came after there was no longer time to use it.
There are conversations I wish I could have again.
Questions I wish I had known to ask.
Things I wish I could tell her now that I see.
And maybe that is why the clothesline has become so precious to me.
Because now, when I see her there in my memory, I am not only looking at my mother.
I am looking at her.
The woman.
For those few moments beneath those sunlit sheets, she was carefree.
Life seemed to loosen its grip on her.
She sang.
She danced.
The breeze moved through the laundry around her.
And something beautifully unguarded appeared.
Almost innocent.
The little girl sitting in that basket had no idea what she was witnessing.
She did not know how much her mother carried.
She did not know that ordinary afternoons could one day become sacred.
She did not know that decades later she would ache to return to that exact patch of sunlight.
She was simply watching her mama hang laundry.
And then there is the other memory.
The last one.
Etched into my soul just as deeply as the first.
Three years ago today, I knew I was not going to allow my mother to leave this world alone.
I could not stop what was happening.
I could not bargain for another day.
I could not make her weary body stay.
But I could make sure she was held.
So I climbed into that bed beside her.
I pressed myself close to her and gathered her into me as best I could.
I held her.
I prayed over her.
And as everyone around us sang her gently from this world into the next, I stayed wrapped around her.
I remember wanting my prayers to drown out any fear that might try to rise.
If there was confusion, I wanted her to feel my arms.
If there was fear, I wanted her to feel love.
If there was even one moment when she wondered whether she was alone, I wanted every part of me pressed against her to answer that question.
No.
You are not alone.
You are held.
You are loved.
You are safe.
I wanted her to know that until the very moment this world released her, someone was there.
Her daughter.
Her little girl, grown now.
Her Tinker.
I wanted her to feel secure in knowing that I would hold her for as long as I possibly could.
And when my arms could carry her no farther, I trusted Jesus would.
Held here.
Until she was held there.
There are memories that soften with time.
And then there are memories that remain anguishing because love was present in every second of them.
That night is both for me.
It is one of the most painful memories I possess.
And somehow, one of the most sacred.
I was blessed, in the most anguishing way, to be there.
To climb beside her.
To pray over her.
To hold her while she took her last breath.
To know that as this world released her, she did not leave it alone.
And what strikes me now is how deeply my first memories of her and my last seem to mirror one another.
Both are wrapped in song.
In the first, I am a little girl beneath a clothesline.
Fresh clean sheets are moving dreamily in the breeze above me while my mother sings.
In the last, I am grown, lying beside her weary body while the people who love her sing her gently from this life into the next.
In one, I am resting inside the safety of her presence.
In the other, I am trying with everything in me to give that safety back to her.
And somewhere between those two moments lived an entire lifetime.
A whole mother.
A whole daughter.
A whole woman.
The beautiful parts.
The painful parts.
The laughter.
The wounds.
The things spoken.
The things we never managed to say.
The things I understand now.
The things I may never understand.
The memories I share freely.
And the ones I will probably always keep close.
All of it.
Because the truth of a person can never be contained in the stories we tell after they are gone.
Especially not someone we have loved for an entire lifetime.
So today, three years later, my heart keeps returning to the clothesline.
To the wicker basket.
To warm sunshine.
To the smell of soap and fresh air.
To clean sheets rising and falling on the breeze.
To her hands reaching upward for another clothespin.
To the sound of fabric moving in the wind.
To a woman briefly unburdened.
Singing.
Dancing.
And calling my name.
Three years today, Mom.
There are parts of losing you that language will never be able to touch.
But perhaps memory is merciful that way.
Sometimes it opens a door.
And today, for just a little while, I can step through it.
The sunshine is warm.
The sheets are moving softly in the breeze.
Your voice is somewhere in the air.
And for a moment,
I can hear you singing again.
A reflection before you go…
One of the things grief has taught me is how often we see people only through the narrow window of how they intersect with our own lives.
We know them by the role they occupy.
By how they make us feel.
By what they give us.
By what they fail to give us.
By the inconvenience of the moment.
By the wound.
By the misunderstanding.
By the way their presence is meeting ours.
And in doing that, we can unknowingly reduce an entire human being to a small piece of our own perspective.
But there is always a fuller truth behind the person standing in front of us.
A life we have not lived.
A childhood we did not witness.
A history we may know nothing about.
Losses they carry quietly.
Dreams they once held.
Fears they do not speak aloud.
Battles they are fighting privately.
Versions of themselves that existed long before they ever entered our story.
And when we fail to remember that, we do more than misunderstand one another.
We diminish the impact we could and should be having on one another when our lives meet.
We miss opportunities for grace.
For understanding.
For compassion.
For deeper conversation.
For connection.
For becoming something good in someone else’s story.
Too often, we hold people inside the small box of who they are to us, never realizing how much of them exists outside of that box.
I understand this differently now because of my mother.
Only after losing her did I begin to see more clearly the woman beyond the title of Mom.
The individual.
The whole person.
The life that existed before me, around me, and beyond me.
And there are things I wish I had understood while there was still time to ask.
So perhaps this is what I hope these reflections leave behind:
Slow down long enough to really see people.
Not only the people you love.
The coworker.
The neighbor.
The cashier.
The stranger in traffic.
The person who frustrates you.
The person you misunderstand.
The person whose behavior you have already explained to yourself without ever knowing their truth.
Look again.
Because the moment you are experiencing with someone is not the entirety of who they are.
It is only the place where two much larger stories happen to meet.
And what we choose to bring into that meeting matters.
Grace matters.
Curiosity matters.
Kindness matters.
Boundaries matter.
Compassion matters.
The willingness to see beyond ourselves matters.
We are called to love one another, and perhaps part of that calling is refusing to reduce people to the role they play in our own lives.
Every person we encounter is carrying an entire world within them.
And maybe the world changes a little every time we remember that.
Maybe our relationships deepen.
Maybe our judgments soften.
Maybe our conversations become more honest.
Maybe our interactions become more human.
And maybe we finally begin to have the kind of impact on one another that we were always capable of having.
So wherever this finds you today, I hope you will pause long enough to see beyond the moment.
Beyond the role.
Beyond your own perspective.
There is always more to the person in front of you.
And sometimes the most loving thing we can do is make room for that truth.
— Tina N. Campbell
Scribed in Light
There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.” — C.S. Lewis
~ every person we encounter is vastly more than the small role they happen to occupy in our day~
“We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are.” — quoted by Anaïs Nin in The Seduction of the Minotaur
~The fullness of loving our neighbor begins by genuinely asking what they are going through~
1 Samuel 16:7
“Man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.”
~See the whole person before you~
Scribed In Light 
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