These are the larget blooms on the smallest cactus I have ever seen.
Today I visited a woman who is dying too slowly for her personal preference. She is weak and cannot get out of bed and cannot eat the food she is given. To get to her nursing home I passed through an older and poorer part of Mesa and was struck with so many images of how much more basic and needy the residents of this area are than those in my part of town. The reality of it all, a woman wanting to die, people struggling to get my on busy streets in rundown apartments brought me again to realize how fortunate I have been because of my education and training and life choices. I saw people crossing the street with handicaps that have limited them, a man and women being pushed in a wheelchair while walking the dog.
Still, they live and laugh and find their joys, and still I cannot shake the deep conviction that God is love, even when the reality of those meaner streets and simpler folks fills my eyes. Madeline said she felt stuck, earth can’t use her and heaven won’t take her. I assured her that both were not true. The caring staff in the home told me she has dignity, and the hope in her heart that she would see her mother who died so long ago when she was eight, told me that heaven will receive her soon enough.
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