My mom had the silkiest hands.

Throughout my childhood, I remember there always being a short, milky white jar with a pink top and Johnson’s Baby Cream label on the nightstand next to her bed. I suppose that’s the particular lotion she got used to having around after caring for all those cute little baby bottoms of her nine children over the years.

At night, after a hard day’s work, she’d change into a nightgown, climb into bed, and read a chapter or two in a book. Then I imagine that before she turned off the lamp, she reached for the jar and scooped out a nickel-size clump of the thick mixture, massaging it between her palms and knuckles and up to her fingertips, perhaps while reflecting on the day with a smile or deep exhale.

Photo by Ana-Maria Berbec on Unsplash

Ever since my mom took her final exhale earlier last month, after a long battle with Parkinson’s Disease, I’ve been missing countless little details about her.

But this morning, it’s the touch of her hands, sweet and silky, that I’m missing the most.

For me, those hands, like an angel, represented everything that is good, pure, and beautiful, for which this hurting world is longing.

Those hands that took little but gave so much.

Hands she used as a little girl to make paper dolls by cutting models and outfits out of Sears Roebuck catalogs. She’d then proudly line the dolls up in their gowns and pajamas all around the perimeter of her family’s living room.

Hands warmed in her father’s armpits after a day of ice skating on a muskrat marsh on their family farm.

Hands that helped her grandmother hang fresh sheets on a line strung between trees.

Hands that embraced the love of her life, who would one day become my father, after he slid an elegant gold band on the hand closest to her heart.

My mama — Diane Louise!

Hands that quietly cheered for each of her children to reach for the stars. Hands that dried tears and comforted hurts that didn’t always show.

Hands that wrote on chalkboards while instructing and inspiring students.

Hands that arranged family photographs in albums, sewed costumes, and transformed vintage jewelry into mosaics of angels and owls and Christmas trees.

Hands that wrote poems about everything from tigers and roosters to drummers and bakers to golden slippers and the Garden of Eden!

Hands that turned the pages of novels and memoirs filled with the rhythm of language she cherished.

Hands that held a cherry blossom petal to her cheek as she imagined what heaven would be like.

Hands upon which the sly, snarky disease first presented itself as a barely noticeable tremor more than three decades ago.

Humbled hands with fingers that became stiffer and more curled, year by year, until the ability to peel her own oranges, tie her own shoes, write a poem, turn a page, spoon in her own food, push the remote button on her mechanical chair diminished and ceased.

But . . . she was never one to complain or give up against the fight.

Hands that held the whole world in prayer each day, for her boundless soul was vast and strong.

Hands that grew pale, translucent, and paper-thin, revealing a life elegantly and long-lived.

Those hands, now silken wings. Wings of an angel soaring amidst the cherry blossoms, enveloping us all with pure love.

Photo courtesy of my sister Birdie, who took this picture while holding our mom’s hand the night before she died.

I’m Julie Jo Severson, mom to three teens, freelance journalist, editor, and author. This blog, Carvings on a Desk, is where I reconnect with my own voice swirling around in the middle. Subscribe and receive the occasional stories in your inbox. Read other recent posts.