Comments
Loading Dream Comments...
You must be logged in to write a comment - Log In
ArtistThe Dormition of Mary in traditional Eastern Orthodox Byzantine icon style: Mary rests peacefully on a richly embroidered bier, wearing burgundy and blue robes. Grieving apostles surround her; Christ stands within a luminous blue mandorla, holding her soul as a small white swaddled figure. Bowing angels, golden halos, stylized Jerusalem architecture, flattened perspective, delicate egg tempera brushwork, aged gold leaf, solemn sacred atmosphere. No text, lettering, inscriptions, numbers, or watermark.
When Mary died, the room became gold.
Nobody had ordered gold. They would have preferred another afternoon with her, perhaps a little bread, perhaps a question about where she kept the clean cloths.
The apostles stood around her bed with their hands doing different things because grief had given them no instructions.
One man held his cheek.
Another folded his hands.
Another looked at her feet, remembering that she had once walked into a room where he was hungry.
Above them, two angels bent their wings to fit beneath the ceiling. They were careful creatures. Even eternity can knock something over.
Jesus stood behind the bed holding a small white bundle.
It was his mother’s soul.
She weighed less than the bread she used to break for him.
He adjusted the cloth beneath her chin. Somewhere inside his hands was the memory of being carried through a doorway, asleep, while she turned sideways so his head would not strike the frame.
Now it was his turn.
The men around the bed could not see what he was remembering. They saw a little white figure and the woman who had grown old among them, lying beneath a red blanket.
Outside, Jerusalem continued being Jerusalem. Somebody argued over the price of onions. A dog found a patch of shade and improved it by lying down.
One apostle reached toward Mary’s blanket and straightened a fold.
He had never performed a miracle.
The fold stayed straight.
Jesus held his mother a little closer.
For a moment he waited, as children do, for her to tell him what came next.
