Mamaw facetimed me yesterday afternoon, via my youngest daughter. Her voice twanged hard through the screen. But then, it’s always twanged hard. On a plane once, someone asked if she hailed from Australia. But it’s Appalachia that’s made her, stamped her with the crags that line her face, the hair that curls like the eponymous gray smoke off her mountains.

She loves those mountains and everything that flows and grows from them:

She loves a good muddy creek and the fish that swim there. Give her a worm and a hook and she’ll perch on the bank for hours, casting and rocking and listening to birds.

Oh, how she loves birds. All around her house, feeders saddle porch rails, hang from soffits, suction to windows so she can watch finches sling birdseed like laughter, hummingbirds spin air to blurred magic.

She loves a vegetable patch full of pole beans and cabbage and maters. She cooks fresh in the summer, then her own canned all year round. You’ll always find a pot of pintos on the stovetop and a hodgepodge of sides on the table. Drop in any time of day and she’s ready to feed you – or sit you down for a game of spoons. She loves a good game of cards.

But she especially loves BINGO. One of the first times I met her was in a Moose Lodge with a bingo cage rattling and a slew of daubers at the ready. She slid a card and dauber my way and told me to play.

But even more than BINGO, she loves babies. Hand her a newborn and the lines in her face vanish, the twang in her voice softens, and she’ll coo, “Good… Good… Good…” for hours on end — the only person I’ve ever heard do this. I’m convinced that’s why my girls have both turned out so very good, good, good.

And most of all, she loves family. And whomever she loves becomes family for life. I ought to know.

Because even though we aren’t technically, legally family anymore. she called me yesterday from her hospital bed to tell me she loves me, the rest of her family gathered tight like quilt squares bunched warm round her heart. Because last night, she gave us all a good scare.

Last night, she went to see Jesus. She told me so this morning when she called me yet again — to tell me she loves me and to tell me she saw Jesus, and her mama and daddy too. Her daddy was running, and her mama was singing, and she wanted so badly to stay. But Jesus told her to go back home, to go tell it on the mountain. And so she did. And so she is.

Mamaw was my mother-in-law for almost twenty years. But she’s my family forever. Our lives are stitched together not just through my girls, her granddaughters, but through that boundless, timeless love of hers. Sweet as birdsong. Binding as pintos. Eternal as Jesus.