Mom...Where Are You?

   My mother passed away the other day.  Gone, adieu, reduced to ashes.   There was no polite or easy way to put it for she was simply not there, at least not physically.   A generation, a ton of memories, a shaper of lives (hers, mine and others), a giver (including that of giving me my entrance into this world), a wife and widow, a survivor, an independent and stubborn-headed woman...all no more.  When I wrote a short tribute to her so that those in her assisted living facility could know, I mentioned that when someone passes it seems that we are expected to sum up their lives in pretty much standard ways...where they worked or what they did for a living (funny how we prioritize that), how old they were or how many children and grandchildren they had.  But my definition of my mother was simple; she was a gentle soul.  As it turned out, the hospice doc was right to accelerate the time she had left, which resulted in my calling my brother who, within 12 hours, had cancelled everything, bought a ticket, and was on a flight from his home in Hawaii.  By the next morning he was at our mother's side, a time which proved to be her last few hours of lucidity.  In and out she went, the lack of eating and drinking seeming to take its toll, or perhaps the arrival of my brother giving her that release to begin letting go of that rope of life.  Whatever.  Two days later she was gone.

   Certainly I am not alone in this tilted, slanted, and unwanted majority group of those who have lost a mother.  Closeness to other family members or close childhood friends now seem quite alienated when compared to that of one's mother (although I could not imagine the isolation that must come when losing a child).  A mother is, after all, the bearer of life and as the saying goes, you only have one.  My wife (whose mum is still alive) told me that it wouldn't matter how many books I would read or stories I would hear from friends, that when my mom died I would process it all in my own way.  Of course, she was right for just as with becoming a parent, there is no real detailed guidebook or outline for each experience will be different.  But little by little, the world my mother shared in her last few weeks and days began to piece together as I searched like a detective, talking twith animated curiosity with those around her...an aide who served her her last tiny bite of ice cream and heard her say that she was tired; don't say that, said the aide, but my mother only repeated that no, she was so tired.  Another worker told me that she noticed that my mother wasn't herself even as she lighted up at going on an outing; and it was a med-tech who noticed that my mother's pattern of eating had suddenly changed, from declining appetites to a complete stop, and notified me.  I  also began to look back myself, that she probably was tired, tired of her body failing, tired of holding on so dearly, tired of being fearful.  Or at least those were my impressions...

   As my brother and I spoke and laughed and remembered, he notied that in many western cultures the beliefs of life are linear which make it difficult for paths to cross (beginning/end, black/white, start/finish, etc.), whie many other cultures' beliefs are circular, that life and death are merely a circle, one leading to the other and back again, a necessary "circle of life," and thus transitions and intersections were happening all the time.  And as we walked into another room and met some of the other residents who knew my mother and played cards with her and chatted with her and gave her both grief and hugs, one woman simply told us that she had "graduated."  It was a nice way to look at it, that moving on meant that she had simply completed this portion of her life cycle yet was still continuing to learn, as were we.

   The other night my wife and brother sat down to listen to a few songs, some old and some new, but soon they switched to a somewhat more reflective nature.  I thought of Leon Russell's words, "...you taught me precious secrets of a truth, withholdin' nothin'...You came out in front but I was hiding and now I'm so much better." (I chose the version by The Temptations)  My wife picked Leonard Cohen: If it be your will that I speak no more and my voice be still as it was before; I will speak no more.  I shall abide until I am spoken for if it be your will.  If it be your will that a voice be true, from this broken hill I will sing to you.  From this  broken hill all your praises they shall ring if it be your will to let me sing. (her favorite rendition of this song is by the Webb Sisters)   My brother chose Ray Orbison: I was all right for awhile, I could smile for awhile.  But I saw you last night, you held my hand so tight as you stopped to say, "Hello" Oh, you wished me well, you couldn't tell that I'd been crying over you (he picked the version sung by K.D. Lang).  Looking back, I tend to still fall back on the words of John Lennon: There are places I remember all my life though some have changed; some forever not for better, some have gone and some remain.  All these places have their moments with lovers and friends I still can recall; some are dead and some are living...in my life I've loved them all.

   My brother asked if I had had any dreams about my mother but alas, nothing yet.  Sometimes that happens, a loved one simply doesn't reappear; and who knows why that does or does not happen.  But I  did have a bit of a nightmare, not a terrible one but one shocking enough to unsettle me (and I almost never have nightmares); it was of a friend's house, the front yard copletely flooded with three feet of water, my car stoppd just outside on the edge as I gazed at the muddy and uninviting expanse for in the dream, I simply knew that to drive further was to sink the car, to possibly become trapped in the watery mud; and yet I was fascinated.  What was this and should I attempt to go further somehow.  Then suddenly, the entire house began levitating upward, the foundation remaining but the lower portion of the house appearing to slip into the upper portion.   Then it all stopped and looking again, it was only the garage door that was opening, the rest of the house unchanged.  But in the dream, I knew what I saw, and that open garage door was now staring back as eerily as an open front door in an otherwise empty-appearing house.  Nothing too terrifying, right?   But somehow, it made me think of my mother for on one of her nights she was quietly moaning for help for about an hour as if trapped or puzzled or uncomfortable with where she was or with what was happening.  When my wife told me that everyone deals with their emotions differently I couldn't help but know that that was as accurate as what each of us will deal with when our time comes to leave this life we know...the only life we know.  Will it be as odd as my nightmare, a familiar and yet strange open door ahead, one frightening enough to cause heart palpitations and yet not one of truly being in danger.  Who knows?  What my mother was experiencing was likely hers and hers alone despite my brother and I being right by her side.  And my own death will likely thrill and frighten and puzzle me with its own visions as I transition to another arena, another doorway, another crossing.

   Today my brother and I will pick up my mother's ashes, and I will be carrying them with the same honor and humility as that of my grandmother's ashes.  But what of them, my brother asked, as relative after relative declined wanting a bit of them (I was planning on keeping some of her ashes in a small urn).  A shrine, a place to pay homage, or would I just be putting them onto a shelf somewhere to view as a reminder, a bit of dust serving as little a function as a photograph?  It was a good point, for my late aunt actually did have a shine-like setup, one in which candles and photos and blessing-sticks were acknowledged and revered daily for her parents and siblings.  And as my mother passed I realized that everything around her in that room would now have to be discarded or passed on...her clothes, her photos, her combs and brushes and toiletries.  The room needed to be made ready for then next person.  But then that was life, and soon my own cluttered life would be similarly unimportant in the grand scheme of things, meaningful to but a few.  But you know, that would be enough.  A stone carved out of a mountain soon becomes as withered as the grains of sand in a desert, a desert that was once a watery forest and perhaps in time would be so again.  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.  The circle of both time and life.  Jumping back again to John Lennon, perhaps no matter the long and winding road ahead it boiled down to the simplest of advice, that all you need is love.  For my mother and her children, we had certainly had that.  Goodbye mom...and thank you.