I don�t remember the last time I saw her before this moment. Her pink nightgown with millions of tiny roses on it swallows her as if she�s a little girl playing dress-up. Gone are the days of her brightly colored mumu dresses, worn never for fashion but comfort, with their swirling flowers reminiscent of a stereotypical Hawaiian tourist minus a flowered lei. Her hair, gray, white, steel, matted and mussed. Gone are the days of little grayish-black rollers with pink pins poked through them. Her short legs covered by two quilts made by her own hands that once made quilts for everyone she loved. Gone are the days of quilting, of tiny stitches, doubled so they will last a lifetime.

I hold her tiny, wrinkled hand in my huge long fingers that tenderly caress her fragile ones. Trying to memorize every wrinkle, every spot, every dark vein visible through her transparent skin. Wanting to hold this moment forever in my memory so it will not fade when she�s gone. My precious great-aunt Mae Mae- Annie Mae to her sisters, but always Mae Mae to me. Her tiny body ravaged by colon cancer is dwarfed it the hospital bed in her bedroom.

Tears fill my eyes and to hide them, I look around the room as she sadly tells me she just cannot walk anymore. There on the wall above her bed is a collage frame filled with precious memories. Her and Uncle Bill who died before I was ever thought of. Grandchildren, those who call or visit regularly and those who she hears about when her own children think of calling her. My second-cousin, Sissy, who, from the loving stories I heard all my life, tightly adored my mother�s cotton blonde hair in her freckled hands, completely unaware in her �mentally challenged� state she might actually be hurting her. My Aunt Mae Mae�s only daughter who never reached her teenage years or left her palate made from an old quilt of Granny Messer. On the dresser more pictures of beautiful girls who are the answered prayers for a beloved son who once ran from home and God.

Once my tears subside and my lip stops quivering, I look at her face. The whiskers of an old woman, the scars of burned away skin cancer, her teeth in a jar somewhere so they cannot hurt her tender gums. Yet there above it all, those eyes, bright, shining, dancing almost. Still, they squint when she smiles and close when she laughs. And it is there in those eyes, I see her as I�ve have always seen her. Joyful, content with all she was given. Even now, in pain, both physical from the cancer that is devouring her and emotional from the fear of being a burden to those who love her and care for her. It is there I find my Aunt Mae Mae and, too, it is there I find the precious little girl she remembers me being. Not this 30 year old, overweight woman I see in my mirror every morning. But the girl who once looked up to her and then looked in her face, forehead to forehead, before my father�s genes pushed me a foot taller than her.

And there in the huge hospital bed, where lays a tiny woman with a giant heart, I see beauty and know that I am loved despite my neglect, despite my shortcomings, despite my self-imagined unworthiness. I see I am loved just because I am. For the first time in a long time I see myself, the person I forgot I was when I pretended to be someone else. There in the eyes of a strong, fragile woman who has had a hard, cherished life. And this is the gift I take with me as I say good-bye, maybe for the last time, until I see her again in our Father�s house. I know I will recognize my Aunt Mae Mae immediately when I once again see that joy as her eyes squint as she smiles and close when she laughs. In case you can�t recognize her, she�ll be the one in the white mumu.

2000 �Iris Laureate

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2000 �Iris Laureate-all poetry copywrighted
1999 � Sites by Starr
Came to read poetry