I think of all the years she protected me and to be kneeling now, taking the flowers out of my hair to plant in front of the soil of her grave, I worry the stone’s shade can’t protect them for long. Tears and sweat mix to blur my eyes from fully being able to read the engravement: Loving mother, wife, and Nana. I look up and watch a cloud, like my mood, move to the left to cover the sun, and the weight of my sadness imprints deeper into the earth. But then I think: Maybe she’s just trying to protect her flowers now. I smile. That would be just like her. Call today's post my closure on my mom’s death, something I think I had been avoiding…but have somehow found this weekend in a cloud. Yup. A cloud. All kidding aside. Nature does that to me. It speaks to me in this very strange way. I’m not sure if it’s because I stare a lot at it--a tree, the sky, the earth--but my mind goes “limp” in a way. It relaxes, like being in a hypnotist’s chair and being told to stare at a spot or a dot on a paper. It serves the same purpose, but it’s more organic. It’s us reflected in IT. I somehow have come to believe that. Maybe Emerson’s “Transparent Eyeball” really does exist. I certainly felt that way this weekend, and that poem came out above. I’m sure there’s not one of us here who hasn’t lost someone to that crabby and persistent dude called Death. It’s really just a fact of life. Like light and dark and good and evil and pleasure and pain and any other opposite, so too, we have life and death. But here’s the thing. Are they opposites really? What happened with my cloud was supposed to be a bad thing, but talk about opposite! Do you think death is a bad thing? A sad thing? It hurts, because we’re living still, especially if we loved that person, and they’re not. It’s almost a selfish thing when I think about it. That’s where the pain is. In our void. That we still have to live without them. We also don’t like to talk about death, and yet we must. We must plan for it. For everything else we plan for--retirement, saving money, etc.--death is really the only sure thing. Have you thought about what you’d like your funeral to be? Do you want to be buried? Cremated? I know. Morbid. But why does it have to be? I realized something about my mother’s death this weekend. I hadn’t dealt with it. Not the way I thought I had. In fact, I realized I hadn’t really gone through the proper stages of grief at all. It wasn’t denial. That is not it…it was just so compartmentalized that I didn’t deny it, I just didn’t want to look at it, face it, think about it in any way. If you read my share last week about my mom, you know why.: The topsy-turvy relationship between mother-daughter, between traditionalist and free-spirt, between stoic and emotional, between proper and wild. But I also realized something else. My mother planned everything. Her plot was bought, funeral paid for, her spot on my dad’s stone just waiting to be engraved, also planned. Everything was a blur, as if my body went through all the motions in a dream I watched from a safe distance, but wasn’t really happening, not to me. I hadn’t really had to do anything but show up and cater it…(that’s not entirely true, I realize, I did), and as I stood in front of her grave this past weekend, planting flowers, I finally saw her death and I somehow let go of so much guilt and resentment and fear and what-ifs. I exhaled it. Quite literally. Right out into the air. And now, I finally have the closure and peace of mind I’ve been searching for these last couple years. It's okay. We must learn to forgive ourselves. Life isn't a game of villains and heroes. It's much more real than that. And grey and all its shades, as my cloud taught me, can be a beautiful color too.
2 Comments
Master
5/19/2018 19:20:26
Thoughtful. I do hope for peace of my mind for you.
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5/20/2018 14:18:06
There were times for me (and perhaps for you too?) when I wondered if my mother had really given birth to me, so different were we. But I loved her very much, even if I didn't understand her. She wasn't a demonstrative woman. She didn't kiss or cuddle us, and I don't think she ever told me she loved me. But she was kind and generous and, I think, did the best she could for us. Her love was shown in the party dresses she made for us, the cardigans she knitted, the endless time spent home-perming my hair (I hated having straight hair!). Maybe we don't fully appreciate our parents until they are gone? I wish I had known my Mum better. Another moving post from you.
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I LOVE to write and read. I particularly enjoy reading erotic romance that has tons of emotion in it. I hope you will ask me questions and share your favorite authors and novels. I welcome all feedback.
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