Sunsets From Heaven -- A Message From My Mother

The sky lit up again tonight, brilliant crimson hues above reflecting on a calm river's surface to double the effect. Every night for the past week, since my mother's death seven days ago, we've been treated to one after another of some of the most amazing sunsets I've ever seen in the decade we've lived here along the shore of the Indian River. There have been storms - rain, wind, at times thunder and lightning that shakes the house and frightens the dogs - off and on during the day, and at times in the overnight hours, but without fail the evening sky has been an artist's palette of yellow, orange, fiery crimson, palest turquoise, deep purple, blue and gray.

Of the many things my mother loved - reading, playing hoss, piano music, watching small children - her unfailing love of the endless display of the beauty to be found in the heavens has been most on my mind this week. When she and my father were still able to visit us in Florida, one of her favorite activities was sitting on our back porch at sunset watching the progression of the end of day. She had a deep appreciation for even the skies others would not find so compelling - so many days out and about in the car, right up to and including the last drive we took in York a few months before she died, she would say "look at that beautiful sky!" I'd look out the window and see only overcast, angry bruised clouds scudding overhead, or unremarkable blue with a few puffy white clouds floating, a view that seemed ugly to me. But she saw beauty -- in the showy sunset, in the ordinary, in the impending storm.

More...