She wasn't quite dead when she performed her first miracle.  We were all gathered around the shell of her body, she still breathing by the dull grace of a breathing tube, when the sound of CC's cell phone pierced the death bed scenario.

It was a doctor's office, confirming an appointment the next day for a small surgery to remove CC' small painful cyst on his thumb. He informed them he would not be there; his mother was dying.

The painfully persisting cyst stopped bothering him and went away.  This is when I knew the sanctification of this demanding, ornery woman had begun.

I had just spent the last three years sheperding her around from appointment, to church, confession and the store.  Most often, I  sat with her bed bound husband while CC took mother duty. I much preferred my husband's father and he told a good tale which I was in the habit of writing down.

Emelia stirred in her jealous juices because I did not ask her for stories, but it was impossible to get much from her - to penetrate through the grouchiness and impatience for a glimmer of coherency.

Then she went and died, just three months after her lifelong mate and we were left with the estate.  I found her story then; throughout her home in small pockets of time stuffed in drawers, closets, boxes, shelves - almost anywhere.Sometimes I would find only a small fragment of paper written nearly forty years ago with the words scrawled on it, "Keep this always."  She had mountains of letters written by CC while he was in boot camp and Vietnam. We found her religious tracts, holy water, rosaries and saint medals.  

My husband decided we should use her nearly new bed set, mattress and all.  I was dismayed when we began sleeping where her worn energy had spent its last year draining from her body each night.  

I went to writing, writing, writing.  CC's story, mine, hers, the sixties. Great wads of words collected, rearranging themselves. First fact, then fiction with a truth growing from the past which was neither quite fact nor fiction.

Last week, CC brought a new mattress. He retired the old one to the other room. After nearly four years of becoming her - from sleeping on her matteress, to hanging her rosaries around,  to an obsessive orneriness about items out of place; he finally choose a new bed.

With a quiet sigh of relief, I followed him to the new bed and hoped for the best.  The next morning,  I noticed with some relief he was a tiny bit different. He seemed to see me that day and know me as a fellow life traveler doing the best she can while not giving up her own dreams.  It has now been almost a week and we do seem to be slowly reconnecting and rediscovering each other at times.

On the three hour trip home from CC's carpal tunnel surgery, Friday, CC's eyes had the look of a man best not fucked with. He was impatient and insulting to me much of the way home because he was sure without his due diligence we would end up squashed on the highway or lost far beyond the reaches of our destination.

One of his mother's habits CC adopted, is to carry the same carrying case she took with her whenever she journeyed away from home. After she died, we found it stuffed with currency.  CC keeps it full of his medications, just in case our  addicted son loses his way into our medicine chest, a seldom but not unheard of occurrence.

As I searched for where CC put his keys on our first stop after leaving the hospital, I looked in the case. Nope, not there. Shut it back. Opps.  Shut that latch too far. Now it is locked. Oh shit.

I found CC's keys and give them to him and we get back on the road, but I know I have failed in one of my most important missions.  I have locked him out of his old medications (not the ones we just got). I try to tell him before he grabs the box that I have accidentally locked it, but he can't hear me for screamming at me for something else. Finally, I pulled over and get the case from the back seat. The latch is not locked.  Thank you, Saint Emelia.