Don’t
you
people
realize
Mother
has
died?
I wanted to shout. This
is not an ordinary day!
I drove through
downtown Ashland the morning after Mother died. A crowd of people stood
waiting to cross the street at the corner of Oak and Main. I saw them
in their tourist clothes, office clothes, work-out clothes. Nobody in
mourning clothes. They were laughing, talking, living life. It was all
wrong.
It wasn’t a new
kind of day for them. If they’d known of our loss, they would have
expressed their condolences, and gone on across the street to the bank.
We buried
Mother. Days passed. Friends and family phoned and wrote and sat with
us and prayed with us during Shiva,
the
first
week
of
the
year-long
formal
Jewish
mourning
period.
People
were
kind.
I
thought
their
presence
would
be
healing.
I
expected
things
to
be easier by the end of the week. It wasn’t so. By the last day of Shiva, I was moving from numbness
into active grief.
I talked with
my friend Justin shortly after Mother died. “When my own mother died,”
he told me, “I felt as if a mighty oak had been wrenched from my
heart.”
The hole she
left was that big. This wrenching feeling . . . I recognized it. I felt
it almost from the beginning. There was the gentle passing, and then
the ache began, the ache of this gaping wound. Every thought, every
sight, every memory brought me back to it.
I returned to
my demanding job as the executive director of our local community
dispute resolution center, and I functioned. But I crept always along
the edge of sadness. A particular comfort in those early times was a
letter I received from my dear friend Lu who had lost her mother the
year before. That she understood was a thin, strong ray of light
through the pain, and I read her letter again and again.
I yearned for a
book that could show me how to do this thing: to live in a world where
there was no Mother to laugh with me, talk with me, advise me—hug me.
Therese Rando’s book, How to Go on
Living When Someone You Love Dies,
was a great help. I appreciated the way she explained things. She wrote
about anticipatory grief, the grief I felt even before Mother died. She
normalized my experiences after the death, helped me understand my mood
swings, helped me know I wasn’t crazy. But she didn’t show me enough of
her own experience. I wanted to know more about what it was like for
her. I wanted her to show me how I could do it myself.
My relationship
with Mother was, is, extraordinary. We were blessed to really know each
other as adults, had a chance to grow beyond the mother-daughter
complications. We learned to relax our roles, change them for new ones.
We became dear friends.
And what do you
do, how do you grieve the loss of a mother who is also your best
friend, mentor, role model, spiritual sister? How do you grieve your
partner in playfulness, supporter of girlish and womanly explorations?
Where do you go for solace when your comforter dies? Inside, into the
depths of Spirit. Outside, to your family, to your community. Farther
out, into the Vastness. Some of this I knew before Mother’s death, and
some of it I learned in grieving and healing.
At some point I
realized that grief could transform me, transform itself, but that it
wouldn’t really end. There were times when slogging through the mire of
confusing thoughts and feelings was all I did. The Dance of Life
continued. The balance shifted.
After Mother
died, I was absolutely clear about what is important. Then I gradually
began to worry about the little things again—the long grocery lines,
the apparent slight delivered by a co-worker. Healing went underground,
continued on a subliminal level. It was no longer daily in the center
of my attention.
Grief had made
itself a presence in my life, and I rode it like the bow wave of a
speedboat. It drew me along, then I’d move off center and it would toss
me into the air, all askew until I’d settle back into the flow.
The journey
continues. Occasional dramatic interludes transform the hours, the
weeks, of moving through. I look back on the last six years and see the
“insurmountable” challenges which my family and I have somehow
survived, and I know now that life goes on. We go on. A new kind of
wholeness emerges, a whole with a gap in the center, like a bagel, like
a doughnut. Life is delectable again. Usually.
I am finding my
balance, and I move through my days with a broadening view. I move
slowly, reintegrate myself into the world around me. Grief remains.
Life will not be held back. Grief and Life entwine like partners
dancing—undulating, grounded, steady. Exuberant. Serious. Patient. The
dancers move through soft sand, sinking, sinking; glide on glare ice;
sail through the air in a joyous leap of faith. There is something to
dance about. Yes.
Healing
emerges. Grief dashes to the fore—a slip of paper tucked in a drawer, a
poem in Mother’s hand, a favorite recipe, a special song. Tears flow.
The center is missing, but the memories are sweet.
And insights
emerge, signs of a deepening awareness, signs of the spiritual journey
that began years ago and continues still. My personal spirituality, my
life-long practice, has given me the strength to go on. It is the
vessel that holds the grief.
I decided to
write the book I’d yearned to read. Dancing
in
My
Mother’s
Slippers is my own story, based on journals I
wrote from the time Mother was diagnosed through the five years
following her death. This is not a traditional self-help book. It
provides no lists or sets of instructions about how to heal yourself.
Perhaps you
will resonate with what I have written. Perhaps you will see yourself
in these pages. You may realize you’re not alone.
In Dancing in My Mother’s Slippers,
you will share the joys, the challenges, the healing insights which
brought me peace and sustained me along my way. Community offers
sustenance. Faith offers solace. Being present offers peace. I pray
that as you read this book, you will, even in some small way, be
comforted.
Source of
Life,
grant me grace and dignity to live this day. Give me patience
to notice a
fleeting smile, a moment of
tenderness. Help me face
today’s challenges with wisdom and
with courage, courage to take a
stand when I must, and to surrender
when I have done
all I can. Forgive me the
mistakes I make today, and help me to
forgive myself. Remind me to
cherish a sunlit patch
of grass, birdsong, a
blossom in the yard. Help me recognize
the changes in my
body, and the changes in
those I love, as a part of life. And with all of
that, Eternal One, help me to rest
quietly in Your love and to find peace
in every breath.
Mother
was
buried
in
Jacksonville
Cemetery, three feet from a sapling spruce.
It was pouring down rain, a suitable day for an Oregon funeral. We
huddled together, everyone trying to hunch up under somebody’s umbrella
to keep the prayer sheets dry. Had to be careful not to slip in the
red-orange clay in my high-heeled dress-up shoes. The rabbi said it
rained because Mother dearly loved to be near water—at the beach, by a
stream, even a creek.
I
was
dismayed
to
see
water rising in the grave. My brother Gerry had
built Mom an aron, a
traditional plain pine box. As the men lowered the
casket into the grave it tilted, and I realized it was afloat.
I
whispered
to
my
brother,
“Look, Ger, you made Mama a boat.”
He
turned
to
Dad.
“Look,
Pop. It’s a boat.”
Mother
and
Dad
had
spoken,
over
all
the
years,
of
sailing
into
the
sunset
together
at
their
ending
time.
It
was
Mama’s
magic:
she
brought the
rain, and she sailed across, and Dad will, too, when his time comes.
“If
we
each
wrapped
our
troubles in a bundle,” Mother told me, “and we each
put our bundles in a pile, when it came time to choose, we’d always
choose our own. You never know what someone else’s life is like.”
Grandma used to say that.
Dad
started
hormone
treatments
for
prostate cancer yesterday. And Mom’s
going to a gastroenterologist next Monday to see why she has blood in
her stool. God willing, it will be something simple.
Mom
saw
the
concerned
look
on my face as I was leaving last night. She gave
me a big hug and said, “This, too, shall pass.”
Outside
my
window,
gray
clouds
roll
back,
and
underneath,
an
eggshell
blue
sky.
New
day
coming.
November 23
Thanksgiving
morning
and
we
have
a
lot
to
be
thankful
for,
in
spite
of
many
challenges.
Last
evening,
Uncle
Mac
passed
on.
I’m
going
to Los Angeles
with the family to be with Auntie Mim and the cousins.
December
2
Ger
and
Dad
and
I
went with Mom for her colonoscopy. The doctor talked to
us afterwards in the green-tiled treatment room while the odor of
disinfectant wafted at the edges of our senses.
“I
cauterized
two
polyps,”
he
said, “but there’s a third one, very large,
and it’s partially obstructing your bowel. The likelihood is that it’s
malignant. It’s got to go, or it will close the bowel up all the way.”
“How
soon
does
it
have
to be done?” Mother asked.
“Sooner
the
better.
I’ll
have
my
nurse
schedule
the
surgery
today.
I’m
sorry.”
Mom’s
eyes
held
his.
“Thank
you.”
Mother
wasn’t
surprised
by
the
diagnosis.
She’d
suspected
polyps.
She’d
had
blood
stains
in
her
clothes
that
wouldn’t
wash
out,
and
somebody
told
her
that’s
a sign. But she thought the doctor would take care of them
today. I have the impression she’s known about this for months and has
been putting it off. I can’t blame her. It’s natural to hope there
isn’t really a problem.
Mother’s
calm
on
the
outside,
but
she’s
worried
about
the
general
anesthetic.
She’s
known
people
who
have
developed
dementia
after
major
surgery.
Ger
thinks
we’re
entering
a
new phase, the Losing Parents phase. I remember
thinking in Los Angeles that we’d all been living in a delicate and
blessed balance, and that Uncle Mac’s death maybe tipped the scale.
Sunday,
December
10
I
heard
Mom’s
voice
in
the night on Wednesday, strong and clear and
comforting. Just “Fayegail,” like she was waking me up.
I
went
over
to
visit
her and Dad the next day, and I told her about it.
She said she wasn’t thinking about me then.
Lance
and
I
hung
out
with Mom and Dad yesterday. Talked about the dance we’ll
have for Dad’s hundredth birthday party—seventeen years from now. He
says he’ll dance with me right after Mom. There they both sit, with
cancer in their bodies, calm, lively, joking, full of life. It’s hard
to think of them as ill, even with Mom running to the toilet every
twenty minutes. Maybe that’s the whole point: They are incredibly
healthy and whole, in spite of what’s going on in their bodies.
Show me how to sit with loss
when I am yearning for her hug or loving touch.
Help me to believe she’ll never make the bed
or brush her hair or cook our breakfast anymore.
No lighting candles for Shabbat,
no
simcha.
True, the evidence is there: black clothes and crowded living room
where people share their fondest memories. I cannot speak.
Their kindness overwhelms me. I withdraw.
The house is empty. You alone can comfort me.
Teach me to sit still and hold this pain.
“Sit still,” the elders say. But all I want to do is pace,
cry out, retreat, or maybe disappear.
Show me how to find her in this deepest Void.
“Sit quietly,” You say to me,
“and I will comfort you.”
Terminal Diagnosis
Holy One
As we sit shattered
help us find a way to take another step.
As we mouthe the biggest question, Why?
help us take our place among the many
who have walked this way before.
It is we who ask this question:
Sister, brother, daughter, wife.
There is no answer, this we know.
There is no answer, yet we search the Internet
search our souls search for simple fixes
complicated formulas life-destroying protocols.
Isn’t this the one false diagnosis? Surely a mistake?
And finally we sit, shattered.
Calm us in this frantic time of disbelief
Holy Mysterious One.
Bliss
Source Within
Entice me with simplicity.
With You the worry slips aside
And in its place, a sweet serenity,
A roiling avalanche of Light,
A depth of Silence unbeknownst to me, ’til now.
All the days are filled with complications—
Things to solve and meds to try,
Broken hearts and broken dreams,
Distractions, all, from time with You, my Soul.
Clear away the clutter, Loving One.
When I but shift the focus from my thoughts
To You, all slides away, and I am left with
Sweet surrender into Bliss.
Away from time You carry me,
