"The Tapestry is torn, Mama."
It was a young boy speaking, ignoring the mass destruction of war around him. The house was a smoldering skeleton, beyond the sewing room where he and his mother had worshipped privately. His world now had been split asunder...and their sacred Tapestry was torn and shredded halfway through. His mother knelt on the floor, partly on the Tapestry, holding the rest of it in her arms, rocking silently...rocking silently. She did not respond to his words. She did not react to the distant crashing and thrummings of destruction knocking on the door.
The young boy tried many times to get some answer from her, but he soon realized that his mother, like the Tapestry, was torn -- in her heart, in her spirit. He made her hot tea over burning timbers and left it by her side. She didn't see it -- didn't see him. She just rocked, present in some world far away from here. Many days turned into weeks, but she did not move, nor speak.
One morning he woke to realize she had passed on in the night. He covered her with the Tapestry, tucked a torn piece of it under his shirt, and walked away.
(After I wrote this, I heard a voice say: "What Tapestry are you holding on to?")