Bookstories 35: Tom Painting on His Mom (A Haikustory)

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Last winter at this very time [around Christmas] I flew to Rochester, NY to see my mother who narrowly survived a life-threatening illness. She was confined to a nursing home after being released from the hospital. I walked into her shared room and nearly went right past her, not recognizing the woman in the first bed near the door as my mother. She spoke my name. Shared words later, I knew it was she. The happy ending here is that she is once again living independently in the house where she was born.

nursing home
finding my mother
under her skin

—Tom Painting