These are the aftershocks that still come five months after my mother Betty’s sudden death. Her own mother, a strict Nazarene, had never once cut her hair or used makeup. My son, also a painter, did a portrait of my mother after her passing, taken from an old picture. But my mother loved with an irrational extravagance — a love that covered all past error and contained all future forgiveness. And if I succeed in making this clear, it is because my mother showed me how love could be done.

Source: Washington Post March 09, 2018 00:45 UTC