Remembering Mother

“The buds swell imperceptibly, without hurry or confusion, as if spring days were an eternity.”   Henry David Thoreau

 “Hey Mom,” I whisper. I still talk to her, even though there is silence that follows.

 “Of course you were born in spring,” I continue, “… when the wildflowers bloom.”

 In my mind’s eye, I see her: a little girl with tangled hair, racing through the meadows of her childhood. She’s clutching a bouquet of Lily of the Valley skipping home to give them to her daddy. I know this story by heart because she carried it like a treasure for decades. Every time she told it, she’d look at me, her face catching the light smiling just so, and say, “I wish you could have met him.”

 Her father died suddenly when she was only nine. It was an immense loss for a child, a taking of her innocence.  Yet, what I came to know about Mom is that grief didn’t harden her or make her bitter; rather it shaped the way she embodied and lived the preciousness of moments with a kind of reverence and joy. Mom showed me that loss and heart break can stretch the soul open offering a deeper relationship with all of life.

 “But Mom,” I say, “I did meet him. I met him through you.”

 These days when I notice my reflection in the mirror, I pause. Time has softened my edges with silver hair and fading features like an old photograph. Now what I see is not just me. It’s her. It’s in the tilt of my head, the twinkle in my eye. She is there, not as a memory, but as someone living, breathing, woven into who I am, in the DNA of my spirit

 I am comforted realizing that just like I got to know her father through her, my children, my grandchildren and perhaps their children will know her through me.

 I pick up the small notebook she left for me. Inside she mapped out the end: her ashes scattered into "Mother Ocean," the lists of practical things, the "to-dos" of death. But what mostly stays with me isn’t what she wanted me to do. It is what she wanted my sister and me to know. 

  Her handwriting—shaky but certain—reaches out from the paper.

 “You two girls made my whole life worthwhile,” she wrote. “I loved every bit of it. It was so wonderful to be your mom.”

Intention: Be open and receive the birth, rebirth and mothering of spring time!