Morella

·           God and the skies cried the day Morella died in her sleep.  Alzheimer turned her into a crazy old lady.  Wrinkles, age spots, thinning gray hair, and gapped teeth, hid the real person inside.  She smelled of urine and medicine.  Most of the time she was strapped to her bed, so she wouldn’t hurt herself or anybody else.

·           A lifetime of memories from a few photographs, a tie clip, a Boy Scout award, the last Christmas Card from her husband, give a hint of days gone by.  The nursing home put these mementos in a shoebox.  The box was given to a distant cousin.

·           Her husband had died five years ago, on Christmas Day.  Some say he died of a broken heart watching the love of his life slip into dementia.

·           The state took Morella and everything the couple worked for, a few days after her husband was laid to rest.

·           The minister said words of comfort, read from the bible, and made polite conversation with a few mourners at her grave site.  The sun shined on the September day they buried Morella.  The shinning sun might have been God’s way of saying welcome.

·           No one was there to shed a tear as Morella slipped into eternity.  Morella made the children in her world smile with candy.  She never left home without hard candy or a smile.  Morella was the Candy Lady.  Morella, pillar of the church, crumbled into a Crazy Lady who muttered to herself.  Morella is gone.  Goodbyes are so – so lonely when there is no one left to say them to.

·           The nursing home staff knew Morella as just another invalid, who outlived anybody who cared about her.  To her church, and the community she loved, she was just another person who passed on.

·           God has not forgotten her lifetime of kind acts and deeds.  If the meek shall inherit the earth, Morella is a wealthy woman now and not so crazy……..