This time of year, early morning through my kitchen window and across a boundary of raspberry bushes, I see my neighbor, Gail.  We keep an easy eye on one another.  She’s watering plants, her “morning ritual” she calls it.  “To keep sane.”

 

Hers is a house of women.  Daughters and granddaughters and great granddaughters flow in and out, growing with the seasons.

 

But now, the great grandmother of them all is near her end and is being entirely cared for by her daughter, my neighbor.  “Hospice tells me, it’ll only be a little while now.”

 

Gail can’t leave her house.  She keeps herself busy, tells me she finally got herself to sort and give away her mom’s pants and socks, “She’ll never wear them again, she’s stopped walking.”

 

My husband and I give help where we can.  Mostly, we witness.  “I just saw the EMT’s bring back Gail’s mom,” my husband says in the middle of the night.  “There’s hardly anything left of her but bones.”

 

I remark that keeping her mother alive is consuming Gail’s life.  But, who am I to say?

 

We’ve shared this rag narrow rectangle of berries that volunteer between our houses for decades.  The other day, as we pick across the patch, Gail says, “I’ve chosen this, put myself here caring for mom.”  I tell her I would not be capable of it.  Maybe few would be, who knows?  No one counts all the women in all the houses caring, transfusing life into those they love, keeping them near.

 

Then Gail asks if I can find a picture she says I took of her mom, back when her mom still walked in that yard, picking raspberries that went by the handful straight into her mouth.  “She loved them.”  Gail remembers being shown the photo by an ex-husband, who used to live there, too.  He says he has the picture, but “can’t find it.”

 

Taken before the digital, if the photo exists, which I can’t remember, it’s in the boxes on a shelf in our closet.  I know, even as she asks, I’m not venturing into that thunderstorm of memories.

 

But if I had my druthers, I’d frame up my neighbor right now, so she'd forever be across the patch.  Just to keep near the feeling of peace this easy being between us gives me.

 

This fall Gail’s mom died.  After she gets used to the feel of that tearing, she’ll be able to leave the house, pick up the stitch of her own life, again.  As I look at the worn out raspberry stalks, I see a couple late, deepest red berries are still hanging there, capturing the flavor of the coming winter.  I bet if I pick them, putting them straight into my mouth, I’ll taste that season.