Afternoon All,

"What was she like?", they asked me. "We see them as they are now, as they come to us...but we don't often know how they were." And surprised and gladdened they had asked, had given me the opportunity to tell them about the vibrant life someone I loved dearly had loved, I began to tell them...

For some time now, I have been visiting with frequency those places I once was exposed to only periodically. I am becoming a bit more used to them, to the smells of strong cleansing agents meant to cover the smell of urine, of medicine, of the unpleasantries that seem attached to those final days of aging. I am becoming used to seeing folk in every stage of their final years, some aware and some not so, some sadly accepting and knowing, some cheerfully greeting the days that are theirs now. Nursing homes no longer shock or disturb me to the point of avoidance, and somehow, from the frame of reference I now regard them, I see the folks that dwell there in a far different light.

There was no one quite like her in the world, I thought. She was magical, some beautiful fairy godmother that stepped from the pages of one of my storybooks, and only existed when I visited Tennessee. She was the beautiful lady with the pretty and not at all practical dresses and matching accessories. She was the lady who loved to dance and loved to laugh and had more friends than I could count. She was the maker of more than just cakes..but cakes that took some time to think through. And the little touches like "coconut Easter grass with jelly bean eggs" were those magical things practical busy mothers did not have time to attend to.