Who Was She? Part One
Womanhood: three generationsMy mother died on February 17th after refusing invasive medical treatment for several weeks. I was ill at the time with the thing that landed me in the hospital later, yet I travelled to California twice, once before she died and once after. We were able to have a conscious final conversation, for which I will always be grateful.
At the gate to the other world she finally saw herself as what she was, divine woman energy. "I'm not just crazy mixed-up me, I am a great woman, I am womanhood." Later during our vigil she revealed how she wanted to be a boy when she was young. I remembered her as a woman aspiring to appeal to men, whom she valued over women. "Dress for men," she would say, "women's fashion is ridiculous," or something like that.
She insisted I survive, called me a humanitarian, beeped my "pretty nose," said she wished I could have believed I was pretty. Later she bumped up against a disturbing memory. "Wasn't there something, something hostile when you were a teenager?" Oh, yes, there was something--so much rage the neighbors called the police, so much hurt that couldn't be expressed. Naturally I tried to brush past it, absolve us both, go back to the divine absolute love, but she stayed, wanted to resolve it so that she could let go. It was too big for that, but I gave her a morsel and it turned out to be enough.
Enough for her but not for me. Only after emerging from the nightmare hospitalization did I start to ask into what I had lost. What was this "crazy mixed-up" legacy? How could I reach her, touch her, so that I could let go?
My mother is a winding road
of pockets far from the center
My mother is a winding of whorls and eddies,
each teaming with tiny life
safer tinier far from the center
Lost in the eddies that she
mistakes for the big life
No, not lost
She is hiding there
June 18, 2020
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Reader Comments (2)
Yes, in the eddies, in the whorls, that's where the truth enters.
Thank you for this meditation. ...
All of us with complex mothers, get this.
love,
Roshi
Oh, this is my mother! Our relationship! The eddies and swirls that divided us and kept us close. The secrets and lies and true love and sense of responsibility to one another. The final forgiveness that leaves more behind, because our past is too deep, and the moment of death too close. Yet, without that moment, we could not have expressed what we did, little though it may have been. It had to be enough.