My mother passed away on Thursday afternoon. It happened while I was in Los Angeles with my son Bryce. The morning had been spent on the phone with my siblings who were with her in Utah, and it was clear she was spiraling down rapidly. I left my phone vigil to have a late lunch with Bryce’s friend Rio and his mother, artist extraordinaire Susan Kaiser Vogel. Seated in the unexpected beauty of their post industrial/deconstructed garden patio, Rio made a heartfelt toast to mothers and mothering as we broke bread over a hearty artisanal meal. It was a crystalline moment; an intoxication of sumptuous food, captivating companions and the ineffable joy of being with one’s own child, full grown and compellingly complex.

I didn’t hear the phone ring, pinioned in my bag in a back room, so I didn’t get the news that she had gone until after our en plein air repast was over. But that gap was a gift. My memory of my mother’s final hour is permanently nested in the soft nap of a velveted afternoon spent celebrating life in unadorned, simple sensuousness.

Her wake is Thursday, her funeral on Friday. I’ll be back in Boston on October 10th and will post again here at that time.

Thank you to all of you who have walked with me during these last few months of suffering. Her final lap completed, I can return to celebrating a woman of extraordinary vitality, strength and selflessness.

Elizabeth Call Barlow, 1922-2007