Subtraction and My Mother

I’ve been running on adrenaline for a couple of months now, and I think I’m running low. I am very tired today, and very sad—lonely. Lonely with the knowing that I am losing a very precious part of my life – my mother and my best friend.

I recently read this line from “Longing for Darkness”: Who is leaving, and who will return? I’ve considered it a number of times during the last couple of weeks.

How many times do seemingly unremarkable happenings in our lives bring such huge changes that we literally “return” as someone totally different from who “left”?

That happened for both us when Mother came to live here with Jim and me over 10 years ago.  Neither of us expected nearly the changes that came to our lives, as well as the greatest gift either of us have ever had, a remarkable friendship. Both of our lives have been changed so much that we are someone totally different than who we were when she moved here in 2002.

And each present-day leaving and returning changes both of us even now.

Two months ago, we packed her bags, left her little house downstairs, and moved her into Cypress Woods, a nursing home nearby.  Then, two weeks ago she left again, this time she left Cypress Woods in an ambulance and went to the hospital. She had fallen and broken her hip.  Both of those “leavings” have so changed our lives.

Many years ago, I felt Spirit whisper to me that the journey of life was more about subtraction that addition.  I’ve found that to be true.

I don’t really know what to write, but I need to write.  I want to write.  Tears have been welling up all morning.  My body has been hurting a lot over the last few days—always a sign to me that it’s in stress.  Adrenaline has helped me ignore it, but not today.  I feel the sadness, the grief, the loneliness, and the loss immensely.  So perhaps it’s time to be still, to sit with the pain and the grief, and to simply let it be.

I have an accuser in my brain who tells me I’m being “melodramatic”, but I miss my mother so much.  Not so much as “Mother”, but as friend, companion, sister, and confidante. I miss grabbing my coffee early in the morning and running downstairs in my jammies to tell her of some incredible “new” thought that’s buzzing around in my head.  We’ve laughed so much over the years about her being my “captive audience”.  When I’ve just had to “preach”, she’s been so willing to listen. And now, she can’t hear me anymore.  Not because she’s deaf or dying, but because her own pain and grief is so consuming. 

In so many ways, the woman I’ve been dealing with for the last two months hasn’t been the woman I’ve known for the last 10 years; yet, she’s had to give up so much.  She’s lost so much that it’s finally become a burden to her, a grief, a suffering that feels beyond any suffering she’s experienced in the past.  There is no blame, only grief on both out parts that she’s having to live into her death this way.

This isn’t what either of us bargained for.  I’ve promised her so many times that I wouldn’t let anyone use extreme measures to keep her alive, that I wouldn’t let her lie helpless and suffer; yet that’s exactly where we find ourselves.  She is helpless and she is suffering – and so am I.  And there’s nothing I can do to ease her pain or make her comfortable.  It is what it is.

And it’s not fair.  Death would be preferred by both her and me; yet death doesn’t come.  A few days ago, she told me that she had been talking to Daddy because God wasn’t listening.  We laughed, but on some level, we cried because it seems true.

Dying is just damn hard sometimes.  It takes incredible strength and courage—both of which grow very low after such a long time. It seems to take a lot of deaths before the final one comes.  And Mother’s suffered many deaths: my dad, her eyesight, her breasts, her independence, her capacity to drive and care for herself, her hearing to some extent, and most recently her mobility.  And now, even the capacity to turn over by herself, or to even wipe her own butt.  That’s where we both drew the line; yet, it’s happened, in spite of the promises we made to each other.

I’m sad for her – and I’m sad for me.  It’s hard to stand by and watch.  My tendency is to get angry.  Lately she been angry, too.  Yet, that’s only because we are both afraid.  Not of death, but of this damned dying process that is so debilitating.

So, today, on this beautiful sunshiny day, I’ll let the tears fall.  I’ll let the curse words come.  I’ll feel the pain in my body and I’ll agree that sometimes life seems shitty.  And I’ll ask for relief for both of us.  And I’ll thank Love Itself for giving us the grandest 10 years ever, for giving us the gift of friendship, for giving us great respect for one another, for giving us faith, hope, joy, and peace in the middle of this momentary hell.  Relief will come. Perhaps later rather than sooner, but it will come.  Either she’ll get well and regain some of what she seems to have lost, or Sister Death will finally call her home.  And when the Great Relief does come for her, it will also come for me.  I will so terribly miss her.  I already do. I will miss her laughter, her deep, deep wisdom, her grace, her tenderness, her love of learning, her love of life, and her great passion for growth.  She has given me so very much of herself.  And today, I miss her terribly.  She has been the face and arms of God for me for the last 10 years. The Great Mother incarnated in my own mother’s life.  I looked for God with all my heart, and I found Her in the face of my mother, and I loved Her deeply. And She has taught me to love my Self.

Until relief comes, I don’t even know how to pray or what to hope for, except peace for her.  She deserves so much more than this.  And yet, even in this, Grace comes, through kind nurses and aides, friends, and even the capacity to put our feelings into words on a page.