The sky was covered with dismal swathes of muddied grey, and very little sunlight shone down upon a small group as they grimly processed to the burial grounds south of the old city in east Jerusalem. Between the two men that were there was the white form of a wrapped body. The clothes that one of the men wore gave away to all who saw him that he was Pharisee of the Sanhedrin, and the other similarly wore the robes of a council member. The two women accompanying them wept and lamented as the men carried the body to the burial grounds. Not a word passed between the two men, for they were too wrought with anguish to speak, yet both bore grim expressions.
One of the women behind them cried her grief aloud for the world to hear. Her nails rent her face, and her cries were piercing. In her sobs, she told of the times when the man, whom they were going to bury, had helped her in her sin, casting out devils and lifting her from the dust. All who were there painfully shared in her sorrow. In her own silent weeping, the other woman, the dead man's mother, quietly walked onward, the endless tears that had run down her thin cheeks had stained them. Her eyes were glazed and listless, and her gaze fell on nothing but the wrapped figure before her.
When the body of the man had been taken down from the criminal's cross that he had been hung upon, she had lamented and keened over her son. His bloodied yet familiar head had rested in her arms once his crown of thorn had been cast off. Meanwhile, a wealthy councilman had confronted Pilate, the man's condemner, asking for permission to bury the body. The man had been carefully lifted from the arms of his broken-hearted mother, and gently wrapped in a white linen that the councilman had brought. Another follower of the man had brought a number of sandalwood aloes. Now they tearfully carried the thrashed and raw corpse in its burial cloths. The white form was still and silent.
They neared the councilman's empty tomb on a barren hillside, and the older woman hesitated before she bent her head to enter after the others. The evening was deepening, and the Sabbath was nearing. They had precious little time to lay the body of the man in the tomb, hardly enough time for a proper burial to take place. Clutching the cloth package closer to her chest, the man's mother gazed longingly at the wrapped figure on its resting place. As the other woman quieted her own lamentations, the man's mother reached out and touched the wrapped head of the body. Silently, the older woman gently laid the burial cloth she had been carrying over it. Using the aloes that the other man had brought, she lightly massaged the mix into the cloth strip with tender hands and devotion in her eyes.
The other woman joined her, dripping the linen burial cloths with the other precious aloes. The dead man's mother then rose and revealed the myrrh that she had kept well for most of her years. She ran her fingers down the linen covering the torn and broken torso of her son, applying the scented embalming oil over the aloes with each loving touch. When they had finished, the younger woman stood, yet the mother of the dead man remained. She looked over her son with sorrow and affection.
Her own joy had since dwindled to a shadow, and now her own strength weakened to a thread. She had wished desperately to die with her son. She yearned for him, yet she knew him well. She dried the tears from her eyes and looked upward as if she could see past the tomb's hard rock above her. Her grief was renewed, but her pierced heart beat with love. And she would obediently wait for her son.