CHRISTMAS 2016 Early on Christmas morning I stand beside Mother’s grave in the Greenwood Cemetery of Jennings, Louisiana. It is the first Christmas a headstone marks her burial; the epitaph reads Beautiful Mother. She rests next to her mother Fay who died in 1977 and her grandmother Elizabeth who died on Christmas Day, 1949. It is only 7:30 but the temperature is already 73°. A muggy breeze rustles the oak boughs and migrating geese call soulfully overhead. As I slap a mosquito from my neck and wipe a tear from my eye I get into the car and head to …continue reading