A Pink Versus Hawaiian Print Scarf

My first writing assignment for this semester was an exercise in which
we had 20 minutes, in class, to write using a prompt that we had not seen

prior to the beginning of the timed session. The prompt was five items

that we had to use to come up with a story.

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Exercise 1: 5 Pieces Prompt
Write at least one sentence for each of the instructions below.

Write in 1st person narration. 
1. Focus on a character and describe that character's hands.
2. Write about what the character is doing with his/her hands.
3. Use a metaphor to say something about an exotic place.
4. Let your narrator speak, asking a question that somehow connects
what the main character is doing with the place mentioned in step 3.
5. Let the main character reply with an answer that demonstrates
a confused understanding of the question.

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An image came to my mind immediately.
This is what I wrote:

I had been caring for my mother in home hospice for six weeks. She was in the final stages of life. I noticed that her hands suddenly truly showed her age and her illness as she sat on the back porch soaking up the day’s fading rays of sunlight. She had always loved sunbathing.

She stared aimlessly toward the setting sun, lost in her own thoughts, twirling her hair with her fingers as I had seen her do so often throughout her life, especially in times of stress or worry. 

She kept pushing the Hawaiian print scarf back from her face as she intricately wrapped her hair around and between her fingers. Her hospice nurse had given Mom the scarf a couple weeks before after she had commented how much she liked a similar one the nurse was wearing.

Such kindness these angels of mercy show to their patients, even in a simple gift as warm and special as the paradise that the scarf's patterns represent. It must be so hard to lose them all in the end. Mom had not taken the scarf off since she received it.  

“All that twirling with your hands, you suddenly remind me of a lovely hula dancer I once saw in Hawaii.” I said, smiling at the memory. She smiled back.

As the sunlight gleamed on her weathered, tired face, I asked, “Momma, is it okay if I take a picture of you?” 

“Why wouldn’t it be, that is what you do.” she replied, not understanding why I had asked, missing that I was concerned about her privacy in such a vulnerable moment. 

She was focused on my profession rather than on my need to have one last chance to document the woman who had always been there for me, but who would soon be gone like the setting sun. 

That photo became my favorite image of her.

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When the writing exercise concluded, we shared our writing by reading it aloud. There was not a dry eye in the room when I finished reading my piece. As written, the scene was largely exactly as it had happened in real life, except I changed the scarf from pink to a Hawaiian print and the midday sun to a sunset, a metaphor for the fading life of my mother. Writers, yes even fiction writers, pull extensively from their own personal experiences. That is how their work becomes relatable and authentic.

This morning in my pre-dawn hours of wakefulness, FB Memories served up my post of this photo of my mom in the twilight of her life, the last image that I would capture of her, and I was shocked to see that it was from four years ago. In many ways it seems like a lifetime ago. In some ways, like only yesterday.