“She’s in a better place.” “It really is a blessing.” “At least she’s not suffering.” “She isn’t really gone. She’s right here.”
Really? You don’t say.
I am continuing to surf the internal waves of my mother’s passing, and watching with great curiosity the things people say to me in reaction to the news. I am ever so grateful to be experiencing an awakened relationship to all that this profound occurrence is bringing with it. I am grateful to be anchored in the knowing that I am the one relating to the loss, to the emotions, to the concentric reactions and responses within myself. I am grateful to be able to listen to the things people are saying to me with a sense of compassion and spaciousness. I do not deny that most of them do not ring true for me. I am not residing in judgment of the fact that most of these words seem to me to be ways of conceptualizing and thus avoiding the depth of experience that this level of loss brings with it. I am in thanksgiving of the fact that this gifting lack of judgment is granting me the opportunity to reflect on what I might say to someone in a similar experience.
“She’s in a better place.” Really? And where might that be? So she’s in a better place than right here in this world communing in the deep love of mother and son? If you are eluding to the fact that she is now in a far off heaven I must say to you that we often shared a deep experience of heaven right here in this realm of relationship. That was the deep and true blessing that we were both able to revel in. Is there blessing in the experience of death? There is indeed blessing inherent in all things. And could you maybe just stay with me as I awkwardly and messily get to the place of knowing and experiencing that sense of blessing without ideas that suppress and exclude?
I am grateful indeed she is not suffering the physical maladies that took her from this bodily experience. I also suspect that the consciousness we are dwelling in while in the body continues on after a particular incarnation. I do not know that there isn’t some level of pain, suffering, remorse that supersedes this thing we call death. I also am deeply called to acknowledge and stay with the fact that though at some level her suffering has ended, mine is just beginning. Even as I did not want Mom to suffer I also know she also didn’t want that for me. Will I move through the pain? Absolutely. I will move THROUGH the pain. Not by acting like it isn’t here, but by intimately feeling my way through it, waft by waft, pang by pang.
As alive as her memory and her love is within me she is in fact not here. I cannot literally hear her voice, feel her touch, or experience the tangible one-on-one that is the hallmark of shared relationship. I miss her. I want to call her. I want to have more moments, more laughs, and more shares. I want to reach out and feel the familiar crinkling of her aging skin the coarseness of her silver hair. I want to smell the subtle aroma of her coffee tainted breath. Please don’t disparage my wanting. Let me have that. It is in fact what I have left.
I don’t need platitudes. I don’t need spiritual fixes. I don’t need or want words that deaden. I have enough death to deal with right now. I hear you. I really do. But right now, will you please stop and hear me? Will you let me simply have this experience of pain and loss, knowing with me that it is appropriate, human, responsive, and real? I know at a level she is right here. And I need the time, the space, the acceptance, and the compassion to shift the level of relationship to what and where she is now.
Perhaps you could stop and stay with the feelings that arise in you around the shared experience of my loss. Perhaps you could say less, and presence more. Perhaps we could sit, side by side, in the silence of deep communion. Perhaps you could ask me what my experience is instead of seeking to define it for me. Let me just feel your loving, silent presence that speaks volumes beyond what platitudes could ever offer.
When I feel your heart connected and sharing deeply with my heart, then and only then will I be able to authentically respond with “really, you don’t say…”
Saturday, February 20, 2016
Monday, February 15, 2016
THE REMOTE CONTROL
Her old brown recliner had become her world. It was as threadbare as was she. A folding tray table sat beside the chair, minimizing the number of times she would have to get up or call for something to be brought to her. Staying put had become a type of staying power. The less she had to move the less she realized that she no longer could.
The television remote control and the remote portable phone were the most valuable tools of trade in this micro-world of the brown recliner. They were both instruments of connection in a realm of increasing discomfort and disconnect. There was safety and stability in the usual TV line up. The infrequent calls were at once welcome interruptions and irritating inconveniences. Perhaps the inquiries shined a light on what she herself didn’t want to see; a life that was growing smaller and smaller by the day. A retrospective sense of health, activity, and vitality. A stagnant place in a culture demanding relevance by accomplishment. A place where the only remaining control was indeed the battery operated remote control.
She was growing more and more remote herself. The diminishing memory added to the sense of a shrinking world. There were palpable voids in conversations, times when I pondered and searched for where she had gone. There were forgotten stories retold and reformulated and retold. Yet there were also stunning moments of the razor sharp wit and the limitless sense of humor that were so much a hallmark of who she was. . She was always a woman of profound paradox, and the ever-dimming contrast let me know the end was growing near. Even the recliner chair and the folding table were becoming too big for her.
In the final months the brown recliner was forced to bow to the hospital beds and the inability to navigate the stairs that led to her favorite perch. My most frequent salutation in the final year of her life was to ask whether or not she was in her chair? When I found that she was I would assure her that knowing where she was let me know that all was well in the world. I meant it. I embraced that for her life was changing and minimizing and that a trajectory had been established that no amount of control or resistance could change.
And now the threadbare chair is empty and Mom is gone. Though I have faith that she has re-emerged into a realm of Limitlessness and Radiance in this moment my world is the world that has somehow grown smaller. Oh, I know that this statement may be met with truisms and well meaning concepts. But in this precious moment of honesty and grief I feel the place where only the sound of her voice and the physical touch of her hand could fill this aching void in my chest. I reflect on the ways her own often painful path had hardened her, making her less accessible and unavailable. And then the beginnings of dementia had actually softened her. She was losing control, and yet she was becoming in ways less remote. More connected and more in touch with love. Her last words to me continue to resound through my being. They were somehow profoundly unlike her and yet indicative of the very depths of her.
My last days with her were spent in the ICU and she was silenced by a ventilator. They were the most beautiful conversations we ever had. There were long periods of direct and deep eye contact which was not her usual style. I could feel my heart entrained with hers, and the love expanding and circling in ways I had never experienced with her. We had moved beyond a need for control or words, and the remoteness of the past months had dissipated until union was our state.
And so this is the beginning of a new and ever-evolving relationship with the woman who gave me life. She is both onto the next great adventure and stunningly intimate within my heart. I both miss her and intimately feel her here. The chair is now empty but not my heart. It was time for her to move on, and I am still in the process of opening to let her go. Or more exactly to let her be. To relish the place where she will always live inside of me, not unlike the way in which I was once carried inside of her.
The television remote control and the remote portable phone were the most valuable tools of trade in this micro-world of the brown recliner. They were both instruments of connection in a realm of increasing discomfort and disconnect. There was safety and stability in the usual TV line up. The infrequent calls were at once welcome interruptions and irritating inconveniences. Perhaps the inquiries shined a light on what she herself didn’t want to see; a life that was growing smaller and smaller by the day. A retrospective sense of health, activity, and vitality. A stagnant place in a culture demanding relevance by accomplishment. A place where the only remaining control was indeed the battery operated remote control.
She was growing more and more remote herself. The diminishing memory added to the sense of a shrinking world. There were palpable voids in conversations, times when I pondered and searched for where she had gone. There were forgotten stories retold and reformulated and retold. Yet there were also stunning moments of the razor sharp wit and the limitless sense of humor that were so much a hallmark of who she was. . She was always a woman of profound paradox, and the ever-dimming contrast let me know the end was growing near. Even the recliner chair and the folding table were becoming too big for her.
In the final months the brown recliner was forced to bow to the hospital beds and the inability to navigate the stairs that led to her favorite perch. My most frequent salutation in the final year of her life was to ask whether or not she was in her chair? When I found that she was I would assure her that knowing where she was let me know that all was well in the world. I meant it. I embraced that for her life was changing and minimizing and that a trajectory had been established that no amount of control or resistance could change.
And now the threadbare chair is empty and Mom is gone. Though I have faith that she has re-emerged into a realm of Limitlessness and Radiance in this moment my world is the world that has somehow grown smaller. Oh, I know that this statement may be met with truisms and well meaning concepts. But in this precious moment of honesty and grief I feel the place where only the sound of her voice and the physical touch of her hand could fill this aching void in my chest. I reflect on the ways her own often painful path had hardened her, making her less accessible and unavailable. And then the beginnings of dementia had actually softened her. She was losing control, and yet she was becoming in ways less remote. More connected and more in touch with love. Her last words to me continue to resound through my being. They were somehow profoundly unlike her and yet indicative of the very depths of her.
My last days with her were spent in the ICU and she was silenced by a ventilator. They were the most beautiful conversations we ever had. There were long periods of direct and deep eye contact which was not her usual style. I could feel my heart entrained with hers, and the love expanding and circling in ways I had never experienced with her. We had moved beyond a need for control or words, and the remoteness of the past months had dissipated until union was our state.
And so this is the beginning of a new and ever-evolving relationship with the woman who gave me life. She is both onto the next great adventure and stunningly intimate within my heart. I both miss her and intimately feel her here. The chair is now empty but not my heart. It was time for her to move on, and I am still in the process of opening to let her go. Or more exactly to let her be. To relish the place where she will always live inside of me, not unlike the way in which I was once carried inside of her.
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