(2 minutes, 3 seconds)

It would have been my mom’s 86th birthday this week. As a very young girl I sat next to my mother on Sunday mornings on the hard wooden pew of our country church. I remember two things about sitting beside her: first, her awesome fur coat, which changed color throughout the church service as I brushed it up and then down, and second, I remember my mom’s hands. Along with petting her coat through church, I studied her hands as I stroked them, played gently with her stretchy silver watch, and spun her rings mesmerizingly around her slender fingers.

I inherited my mom’s hands and fingers. My dad had pudgy, short fingers; my mom’s were petite. I imagine that at one point in her life, her hands were even elegant. By the time I spun her rings on Sunday mornings, she’d had five babies, and her hands were seasoned with serving.

My dear mom held a lifetime of sorrows that ran deeper than she was ever willing to explain. These sorrows marked her, wearing on her body and soul. By the time my mom was in the winter years of her life, she had been through more than her share of hard times.
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My brother called me at 8:25 pm on a Tuesday evening seven Octobers ago to tell me that our mom was gone. Suddenly and without a goodbye to anyone, her heart had stopped… and so did my world.
Early the next morning my siblings, step-dad, and I sat in blurry-eyed shock as the funeral home director talked to us before seeing our mom for the last time.

I remember a large blanket covering her from her toes up to her shoulders, with her arms and hands tucked underneath. I hovered next to her, tears streaming, lingering in disbelief. Then I stepped forward, leaning down to kiss her and her dark hair goodbye.

As I slowly turned and softly walked out of the room, I was overwhelmed with the realization that I was not done saying goodbye. I quietly went to the funeral home director and made a request, to which he graciously and promptly responded.

A minute later, when I came back into the room where my mom was, the blanket was tucked neatly under her arms this time, and her hands were resting at her waist, on top of the blanket. He had exposed her hands. I needed to see her hands.

I drew near to rest my hand on hers, now ringless and cool. I considered how she had loved me and served me with those hands. Tears dropped onto the blanket covering her as I pondered how she delighted in retelling again and again the story of how she had counted every one of her babies’ fingers and toes after we’d been born.

Long ago I had studied her hands for years of Sundays, and now, my hands enfolded my mother’s still hands and I studied them for the last time. I wished her hands could tell me stories. I ached to remember the powerful hand squeezes she always gave when she was saying goodbye. Not this time.

Now covered in wrinkles and peppered with age spots, her hands looked different, older, but still I knew her hands. I remember thinking that October morning as I stared down through my watery gaze how overwhelmingly, stunningly, unspeakably beautiful her hands were to me. Hands that had counted my newborn fingers. Hands that had served without counting the cost. Hands that had carried more bundles of burdens than I could fathom. Hands that were hers – and somehow, now mine to remember.