She Looks Good

She looks good.
She receives us at the corner of her paved driveway and she looks good.
She wears a smile and embraces familial genes as brother inches his way out of the tired truck that has just trekked miles of highway.

Sixteen months ago, death bore a gaping wound oozing life from a body that I was unsure would recover. 'I don't want to live without him. I want to go too.' Whimpers...sobs...cries and I am left speechless. Words cannot be formed in moments like these. It's as if silence forces itself to the surface, through the chaos of scrambled words trying to assemble at the gates of a muttering mouth. The thud of her grief still reverberates at the center of my hollowed chest.

She walks with a lilt in her step and the loss of a couple of dozen pounds are evident in her small frame. She is living without him, a soul-mate that will never be replaced. The hole now covered by keloidal tissue of woven skin, inching itself over serious injury, is obviously apparent yet awkwardly reassuring. She wants to go, but she waits. It is not her turn. She knows this. Peace placates her now as she waits.

The house beams with life as growing kids turn to adolescents and nephews come and go amidst skateboards, rails and bikes that can do stunts never before imagined. And of course the occasional visits of grand kids. Who could live without those? She has put together the pieces and glued them into a re-invented form, resembling nothing of the original . And it is good. And as I look around and chaos has now collected itself into order, I realize... No... God is good.
God is good.