The Visit

It feels like my mother has been visiting me lately,

a little more than a year after her passing.

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Seems fitting, given that spooky season

is upon us, even though we never

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celebrated Dia de los Muertos

when I was a child.

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The lives we all led back then

were firmly rooted in surviving the

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uneasy present, so celebrating

ancestors wasn’t in our family vocabulary.

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But now, things are a little different.

She appeared to one of my sisters in a dream,

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upbeat and happy, with shows of affection

her reserved countenance rarely allowed

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when she was alive. It was a lovely little

message from the beyond.

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Later that day, I noticed the plants I’d been given

from her burial service, which I’ve worked hard

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to keep alive all this time. There among

the velvet greenery, a lovely purple flower

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had emerged, unexpected and radiant,

leaning with its brethren leaves towards

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the sunlight filtering through my living room window.

Fitting, all of that, as I perceive it through my heart.

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My mother’s spirit, letting me know

she’s around, and not just in our DNA,

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but blooming in her next incarnation,

happy and bright and wearing

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purple – which she knows is

my favorite color.