My mother's poems still surprise me, I am finding her very essence in them.

Today, it's "Each Joseph:"

Each Joseph

Intrepid Joseph, far from home, hated by

brothers who had cast him in a pit, taken

his coat of many colors, sold him into slavery –

this youngest brother still refused to hate.

Perhaps we too, with spiritual certainty, can learn

to trust in God’s design, deliverance, and love. Our

Father’s grace will keep grim moments and uncharted

journeys free, revealing sure and tender ways He

speaks to everyone and leads us safely home….

Darren Stone

Late into our first fall together, the white space around her poems started bothering her. She would cut and cut and cut to within millimeters of the edge of each stanza. She would pull pages out of books of others' poetry, even her beloved hymnal, and then slowly trim them down. One day she even started ripping the photos and remembrances out of her wedding album before we could protest.

This was just one of our devastating "new normals." Why would mom destroy those pictures, that beautiful handbound book? The hymnal that was her comfort?

I wondered, as I did during much of her descent: "What is it that she sees? What is it that she needs?"

Maybe it was that she wasn't able to create anew. But "editing" was something she could still do, - the actual physical changing of the space and words a literal way to satisfy.

We joined her. Chopping poems, re-typing and re-printing ones that upset her. Changing words that no longer felt right to her. I started printing her poems on colored paper, thinking the margins wouldn't be so shocking, that the colors would make the work feel new and exciting.

Yesterday I found the carefully cut, pasted, cut-some-more, scotch-taped, amended, and stickered "Each Joseph." She'd even colored in the bits of white sky that peeped through the purple on the bit of postcard she'd collaged in.

Of course she'd added: "Please return this if it doesn't appeal." (Ever prepared for rejection)  

But I hadn't noticed her addition at the top until today:

"I'm trepid Joseph, Far from home."

Only my mother, my beautiful demented mother would have come up with that. Still trying to find her way home, still playing with the words she lived for.