Hands

This is my first post, but I have been following Five Minute Fridays since I began reading Between Blue Rocks, which lead me to Lisa Jo and inspired each and every time I decided to give this a go.

Hands.

Two months before my mother died, my sister came to Yazoo City for a visit.   I had asked a photographer to come and take our photo and had no idea how it would be staged, thinking more traditional with just smiles and a sunny background.  Needless to say, mother who is camera shy was not about to cooperate.
Our photographer took us away from the other residents, draped a bed linen behind us on the wall and said to us, "Sit down on either side of your mother, take a moment to look at each other hold hands and I will know when you are ready."  We did.

Everything up until the moment we held hands seemed staged, but when my sister and I felt the hands of our mother, and felt her pulse, her heart beat and life flowing in her that brought us into the world, her hands, the hands we knew as children, the hands of love...

We held those hands two months later in the same room as she left the world, we felt that same pulse leave  as her breath and her heart stopped.  In my mind I could feel her hand leave mine to take another.   stop.