A lyric and a wish for Mom

It's a few minutes after 11 o'clock on the day my mother died.

Fitting, though, that she and my father are reunited in time to enjoy a World Series game together.

We live on hope and faith.

As I sit here and write tonight, I can't get away from a song and a vision.

The song is Springsteen's "The Wish," written about and sung to his mother, from his "Tracks" box set of 1998. I've played it about five times since I got home from work.

"If Pa's eyes were windows into a world so deadly and true
You couldn't stop me from looking but you kept me from crawling through
And if it's a funny old world, Ma, where a little boy's wishes come true
Well I got a few left in my pocket and a special one just for you."

My wish tonight is this: I know human beings cannot understand heaven. Its splendor is beyond our ability to imagine.

Maybe paradise for my parents is simply being together again.

I see a table. I see my parents sitting at their normal spots, Dad at one end, near the floor register and within arm's reach of his radio. It's tuned to the fourth game of the World Series. He has folded a newspaper and placed it on an adjacent chair.

Mom's at the other end of the table, nearest a back window that looks out over a verdant yard. She has put her knitting down.

They've cracked open a quart of beer; I remember brown bottles of Pabst, circa 1972. They've filled matching copper mugs.

Then I hear that sound, the one of dice rattling in a cardboard cup, the familiar rhythm that used to lull me securely to sleep in my bedroom above the kitchen.

The first game of Yahtzee is on.