Lying in her hospital bed, weak, puffy and wrinkled. Her watery eyes as wide open and bulging as ever in her life. Her still dark hair wispy and thin. Her eyebrows caked with makeup. Her lips small, cracked and dry.

Her voice, raspy and hoarse, when she was able to talk at all. Her hands bent with years of arthritis hold my plastic rosary beads. Her toes also misshapen.
The covers thrown to the bottom of the bed because she is very hot, despite the fact her skin is ice cold to the touch.

Her body weakened and small. We hang around and watch her as she lay dying.

I think of what beauty means to me and it used to mean a rose in bloom in spring, a sunset on the beach on a clear summer day, a puppy running in the park with a child, a bride on her wedding day, but my meaning of true beauty has changed forever now.

Beauty to me is her weak wrinkled puffy face, her eyes as big as saucers, her hands and feet twisted, her tiny lips trying to say, “He’s my baby,” one last time.

That’s true beauty to me.