one shining moment

It's as delicate as a soap bubble. Fragile and glistening. Beautiful. It's a moment, one moment, one shining, glimmering moment and it happens almost every morning. I wake in my bed, Bubby curled into my shoulder, Wembley cuddled up to my legs, and...she's well. Everything is normal and as it should be. She's at home, drinking her tea, petting her dog, chatting with her husband.

All shall be well, and all shall be well...

It's a moment. One moment. And like a soap bubble it bursts and leaves behind reality, a reality in which she is in the ICU and I feel adrift. Because what am I to do when my anchor is lost at sea? I love her so.

We muddle through, amidst terror, remembering to laugh and eat and sleep and drink water, not only coffee. I desperately try not to become hopelessly intangled in a labyrinth of what-ifs. Because I do not know what tomorrow holds. I do not even know what today holds, only that I will hold my mother's hand, stroke her face, listen while she chats and find little moments of calm, shining bubbles of normal in the midst of complete and utter chaos.

And all manner of things shall be well.
~ Julian of Norwich