Loosing mom

Social media can be such a blessing when we use it well. It's really good for letting people know you have had a death in the family without having to actually say it over and over again. So if you follow me on FB or IG, you may have seen that my mother recently passed away. I wanted to share a little about that experience because, sooner or later, it is a journey that most of us will walk.

I am certainly no expert on death or grief. I can only share a small part of my own experience. My mother had been living in a nursing home for several years. She constantly complained about the food and ate very little unless I brought her something from the outside. When I visited her on the Monday after returning from Portugal, she seemed thinner and weaker than usual, but she was chatting away as she always did, but refused to eat anything. I planned to bring her a delicious milkshake, but by the time I arrived on Wednesday she was unresponsive.

Some people wondered whether she waited for me to return from Portugal. It's certainly possible. She lived several days longer than the doctors expected, as sometimes happens, and others wondered if she was waiting for my husband to return from Portugal as well. I like to think she wanted to make sure I had my greatest source of support beside me before she left. Of course, no one really knows.
Over the years I have studied and practiced rituals that are meant to assist someone who is dying. I was grateful to have those practices to use. I can't say if it helped mom or not, but I do know I felt I was supporting her through this mysterious transition by the words I spoke, my presence, and simply by sitting with her as much as I could.

Doctors and nurses can tell us the physical signs of dying and what will most likely happen next, but none of them can really tell us what is happening internally. I spent a lot of the time wondering:  what is she seeing with her staring eyes, what is she trying to say, what is she experiencing. Would she wait until her brother arrived? Was she in pain? Was she distressed?  

I suppose we only truly know when it is our own time to make that journey—and by then, of course, we cannot come back and tell anyone about it. It remains one of life's greatest mysteries: how we leave this world.
I was fortunate to have many people share their own experiences of loosing a mother with me, and they all encourage me to care for myself through the process and take it slow.

My mother and I were never especially close. Honestly there were many (many) years when I was very angry at my mom—as I imagine many of us have, at one time or another, toward our parents. During these last years our relationship was largely logistical- I was the closest daughter physically, so I spent the most time with her. I really began to enjoy this time as she told me so many stories of her time growing up and our extended family.  She really loved to tell stories, and she was good at it.

Many people told me, "Losing your mother is a big one." I am discovering how true that is. To my surprise, this has been harder than losing my father, even though I felt much closer to him. 
When I went to sleep the night she died, I experienced something difficult to describe. It felt as though there was a tremendous severing—a tearing apart. It was physically painful, though not necessarily unpleasant. It felt like something  energetic was happening, and it was beyond what my thinking mind could understand.
The image that came to me was that of being handed a baton in a very long and difficult relay race. As I am part of the maternal generation in my family line who is still living, I suppose that is exactly what happened. I am now the next generation, and me and my sisters I carry the karmas of that maternal lineage.
One of those karmas is silence.

In my family, we did not talk about things—especially not about our feelings- pleasant feelings, painful feelings, personal struggles. Spending time with my mother's brother over these last few days helped me understand that this wasn't simply my mother's way. It came from her parents. My uncle, who is much more emotionally expressive than my mother was, told me that his parents never discussed anything personal or emotional. He often had no idea what anyone was feeling or what was really going on.
He and I are the outliers.

The baton is now in my hands, and I prefer not to continue the silence.
The lack of emotional expression, the fear of looking directly at pain—those ways of being are simply not sustainable in my world.

That doesn't mean sharing everything with everyone. But I have learned over the years that when we honestly share what we are feeling with trusted people, we create a space where others can do the same.

Healing happens there.

Growth happens there.

Relief is experienced.

We can finally exhale.

Talking about personal things or emotions made my mother deeply uncomfortable. I understand that probably came from her parents, the consensus of the culture she was raised in and probably from her disability as well. But just like her macaroni and cheese recipe, it doesn't need to be passed down to the next generation.

I think another part of taking up the baton is that now I am someone who has now lost her mother and I recognize just how significant that is. Even though we weren't emotionally close, and she wasn't one of the great pillars of support in my life the way many mothers are for their children, her death has touched me more deeply than I expected. Perhaps it is because our mothers are our first teachers—actually our first gurus according to the teachings. And if it is our biological mother, she is literally the body from which our own body formed. This is one of those connections that exist far beneath thought and memory. The depth reveals itself when the connection is broken.

So to all of you who have told me over the years that you lost your mother, I want to say something I couldn't have honestly said before: I didn't fully understand, and I am sorry for your loss.

And to those of you whose mothers are still here, but who know that day will eventually come, I want to remind you to be gentle with yourself when it does. There is no "right" way to move through it, and the impact may surprise you.

Finally, to everyone who reached out to me—with kind words, cards, hugs, meals, cookies, flowers, messages, and love—thank you.

My mother was never comfortable receiving these kinds of gestures. She wouldn't even tell you what kind of soda she wanted. "Anything wet is fine," she'd say.

I am trying to do something different. I am allowing myself to receive. That, too, feels like part of breaking the karma.

I am receiving your kindness with gratitude, humility, and joy.
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...But please, no more candy, cookies or cake! 
I have more than enough.