Already There

SO-PHEEEE-AAH!!!

Sophia, our tiny, earnest guard dog is barking ferociously. At what, I have not a clue. Ten minutes later, same story, this time at squirrels digging in the flower bed. Rinse and repeat: at a dog walking with his parents; at another dog at the corner, and yet another dog far down the block. He’s just a speck at this distance, but she sees that speck…and it looks suspicioius.

Still slowly waking up, I brew a cup of coffee and settle down at the kitchen table to map out my Saturday while the kid and husband are out enjoying a seldom breakfast together. 

Now Sophia’s tail is wagging in anticipation of someone approaching the porch. SIGH. That means dad and her sister are back already from breakfast. I just wanted some alone time, I whimper. 

Then there’s a knock at the door.

Sophia’s beaten me to the door doing her funny little hop because she’s excited to see Dad Almighty and her sister. Welp. Not only is Me, Myself & I Time over, but apparently no one has a key. I get to the door, thinking WOW the sunrise is blindingly bright today.

Distracted and disappointed at the interruption, I open the door and there she is.

My mom.

Who died way back when I was barely twenty.

She’s standing on my porch with a pleasant smile, patiently waiting for me, now her officially senior citizen daughter, to open the door.

Which I do and Sophia tumbles out, tail wagging, standing on her hind legs like she’s known Mom from time immemorial.

Mom? The word catches in my throat because its been nearly forty years since I’ve uttered it. To her at least. I check my pulse to see if I’ve just died, and nope. Still alive in flabbergasted flesh and blood.

She steps in and we hug a hug that is filled with light and love and peace and comfort. It envelopes me and just about lifts me off the foyer floor.

She makes herself at home and I start prattling about how I’ve missed her, how I’m married and that her granddaughter’s middle name is hers and how Sophia is our new dog and that she probably already knows Charley our dog that passed away because all dogs go to Heaven and, and…

She interrupts.

I’m here for you, Babygirl.

At once I’m a child/teen/young adult, unsure of myself, unsure of whether I’m smart enough, pretty enough or valued. I look at her and grin, and I know I’m all of those things because I am. Her babygirl.

I catch her up on Twenty-first Century living. About how we have to pay for television, and how there’s no such thing as long distance phone calls anymore, and that our phones are really computers and by the way, everyone has computers because everyone has a phone.

I tell her about realizing that her life must have been so hard. Losing her mom to cancer and then losing her father, sister, brother and niece in a car crash only two years later. Raising the four kids as a stay at home mother and dad primarily working one full-time job and another as Assistant Pastor. I apologize for choosing cold cereal over her beef roast any time she’d make it. I thanked her for the meal profile that I still can’t shake to this day: a protein, a starch, and a vegetable.

More words tumble out about me trying to be hyper organized because I work and then more about how I’m lucky because technology makes all of this less stressful. 

You look tired though, Baby Girl. 

I change the subject. Momma, what was it like to see your parents and your sisters and brother and niece when um…you arrived? (I couldn’t think of a better word for died)

The look on her face is interruption enough. It’s like she couldn’t comprehend  the WHEN and DID part. Tenses were clearly not computing.

Mom?

Babygirl, you are asking about time. You are burdened with time, you are bounded by time. Time is passing along with the memory of time itself. Do you know that?

I mean, I guess so (still not getting it).

She continued.

Your computer, Your alarms, your phones, even that Right Now Pot (she meant InstantPot but apparently she still can’t get names right) Babygirl, your life centers around time and the saving of it. These things are helping you save the one thing that slips through all our fingers. I’m in eternity. Your grandparents, your aunts, your uncle. They are there. I am there and so is Dad.

So…they’ve been there, right?

Babygirl, they ARE there.

So you don’t remember them getting there or even you yourself getting there?

We ARE there.

Have been? I push, still confused like I was when she tried to explain high school algebra to me and she ended up in literal tears.

AM THERE. She pushes back.

I don’t get it, mom. I just want to know what you remember about Josephine and Dad getting there after you, uh…I just want to know what is was like. Like, what did you feel?

They ARE there.

They just are.

You can’t understand on this plane, Babygirl;; and, that’s okay, In your present, broken state, you won’t understand eternity. Here’s what I’m asking you to do: just live with eternity in mind, and stop trying to save what slips through your fingers in the first place. I love you, Babygirl. 

And with that, she was gone. But I know she isn’t gone; and I know that she already sees me there.