Momma always loved watching the sky. She said that it was Mother Nature's play on stage, constantly- all you had to do was look up.

I swear that half the time she wasn't even here. On trips to the beach, she lay on her blanket in the sand and stared peacefully at the sky, though she wore no sunglasses. When our family reached the top of a mountain, everyone would take in the panoramic view below; everyone but her.

In the time before she had to go, I would steal glances at her. She was always smiling. There was always a hint of blissful delight in her eyes. Sometimes she laughed this warm, buttery laugh and closed her eyes and let the sunshine seep into her skin. And her gaze never left that sky.

At night, prickly stars twinkled in navy velvet for her. She would sit on our driveway for hours, marveling at their silent beauty. One night when Daddy joked, "Just go be an astronomer, Kit" she cough-laughed and shook her head vigorously.

We hiked as a family a lot, living in Colorado. Momma began coughing more and more. She would frown and squeeze her eyes shut and would do all that she could not to cough her lungs up.

Eventually, Momma's cough got too bad and she went to the hospital two blocks down from our house that was that color she hated so much- black. The doctors worked hard over her every day and said she was doing just fine. I knew better. I knew that she couldn't see the sky and withered away underneath those fluorescent lights. I knew that no matter how many drugs and no matter how much medicine they put into her, that blue sky was her only remedy.

She never did get her remedy, so instead was carried away in a black box that rested in a black car driven to a place with many blackened stones where a service was held and everyone wore black. To try to peacefully put her to rest. At least, that's what they put on her tombstone. I knew she wanted blue. Sometimes when I lay on her grave I swore I could hear her shift, trying to get a better view of the sky. Momma never did sleep easy in that coffin.

A few weeks before the news, she told me that days were for learning and nights were for dreaming.

So it made me wonder, what did she learn when she saw the sky in the daytime?

Did she still dream in her eternal night?

At times after her death, Daddy would yell through our house so loudly that I feared it would shake to its very foundation in a rumble of dust.

Just like she did.