this is the love letter I read at my mother's funeral

Mom loved birds. All sorts. Some of the plainest and most common she called LBBs, or Little Brown Birds. I have always loved that she made something special and lovely out of the ordinary. That is what she always did—with birds, with her gardens, with people, with me. She taught me to bloom where I am planted, that I can learn something from any place or space that I find myself in. She taught me that when I felt too much, or became overwhelmed by all the bad and terrible things in the world, that all I needed to do was to make my own nest, and work on small things—in my home, with my people, in my community. She taught me that small changes, small things done with great care and love, had an impact on the world. She was an amazing woman, and she taught us well.

We had our tough times, Mom and I, but I’m fairly certain that one of the reasons I exasperated her so much is that she and I were of similar mind, and by that I mean stubborn and independent. She used to tell me, in my more trying moments, “I hope you have a child just like you!” and in 2003, when my second child was a year old, I asked her, “Is it possible I could have TWO children just like me?” There was a long pause, and then she said (with something like glee), “Oh, yes. Yes it is.” And she should know. Because she had five children, just like her.

But as infuriating as I may have been, she encouraged that independence. When I was in preschool, I decided I was old enough to walk the several blocks to school by myself. I do not remember if I snuck away or if she told me I could go, but I set off on my own. It was only as I went to cross the street and looked both ways that I realized she was following me. She left enough of a distance that I could feel independent, but was close enough that she could save me if she needed to. She has always been my safety net, always the one I’ve come home to, always the one to comfort. So it was a great honor for me, in her last days, to be able to help comfort her.

At 4:09 p.m. on Friday, March 25^th, 2016, one day after her 58^th anniversary of marriage to Dad, Mom quietly died. It had been a busy few days; she had come home for good from the hospital only on Wednesday, her last wish to be at home. That day, my sister Cheryl tells me, she stared out her front window for hours from the hospital bed set up in the living room. Visitors came and went, there were bites of homemade pudding and strawberry and saltine cracker. And there was waiting.

Even when a death is impending and expected, even when the last few months or years of life have been full of pain, when it suddenly starts happening in earnest, when the focus becomes getting busy dying instead of getting busy living, it all seems too sudden and fast. In the last three weeks, I felt my mother’s rapid decline and started grasping, gasping, desperate to keep her close.

Birth, living, loving, dying, death. They are all messy and natural and mundane, and yet feel like they should be so much more important. How dare the world continue to go on as if nothing is wrong when I am losing my mother? I will never again smell the hollow of her neck that I associate with comfort; never hear her say, “I love you,” or “Oh, for fun!” with a clap of her arthritic hands when she finds something particularly enjoyable. I tally the losses, all the little things I wish I’d realized were for the last time, and I find myself mildly insulted that her garden hadn’t violated every law of nature and exploded with blooms a month or two early, just for her.

My mother taught us, all of us, about unconditional love. She taught us both in word and in action that people are who they are and are worthy of love regardless of their imperfections. She taught gentleness, but was the fiercest mama bear, and we, all of her children, learned from that, and our children, her grandchildren, may or may not appreciate it. She was a matriarch who ruled with a wide open heart and knotted apron strings, who taught us well and then let us find our own wings to fly, even when those wings took us in a direction she’d rather we not have gone—and then, even then, she loved us anyway.

I have said, and heard this echoed by my sisters, that I want to be exactly like my mom when I grow up. I feel so lucky to have called her friend in my adult years, although the road there was rocky. Her love of flowers, trees, and all things nature (except for squirrels) is something she passed on, as well. I will always feel most at peace with my hands or feet in the dirt, smelling soil rich with life and potential, coaxing plants from seed or bulb.

Last Friday morning didn’t feel special. We all ate breakfast, I rubbed Mama with essential oils, gave her medication and sponged her mouth out with lemon water. She had visitors in and out, and the hospice nurse, and then the bath aide came, for a “spit and polish.” They left, and Dad and Cheryl went out for groceries and tulips.

Mom died not fifteen minutes later. It was so quiet, and gentle, and unexceptional, the leaving of this exceptional woman. A deep breath, and then another, and then no more. I held her in my arms, told her she was loved, and let her go, my head on her chest, listening to her generous heart beat its last beats. And then I smelled that spot at the hollow of her throat, and I rubbed her down with oil and tears and so much love.

I am my mother’s daughter. I am reminded of this every time I look in the mirror, every time I hold my children close, every time I dig in the dirt or feel too much or bake a loaf of bread. I am my mother’s daughter, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I do not share the same beliefs as most of the members of my family, but I do know that my mother lives on—in her progeny, in her gardens, in her teachings; in the love she shared with my father. And I have found great comfort in the words of writer and performer Aaron Freeman, who states,

“You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy is created in the universe and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every BTU of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid the energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.

And at one point, you’d hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off you like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.

And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue in the heat of our own lives.

And you'll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you...that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound, and that they'll be comforted to know your energy is still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone. You're just less orderly."

A little thing I found about yoga, and grieving, and goodbyes

This is How We Say Goodbye

by Bryonie Wise

via elephantjournal.com

“Warriorship is so tender, without skin, without tissue, naked and raw. It is soft and gentle.

You have renounced putting on a new suit of armor. You have renounced growing a thick, hard skin.

You are willing to expose naked flesh, bone, and marrow to the world.”

~ Chögyam Trungpa

This is for you, my love. 

I’ve been sitting for days, it feels like—weeks, or years, even.
My mat, freshly powered by the full blue moon sits beside me as I work; every time I walk by, I can feel her whisper, It’s time to move. 

Tonight, I could hear her, loud and clear; despite the heavy of my body and the weight of lungs, full of grief and exhaustion—I knew she was right: now was the time to move. 
And so, this moment that I had been anticipating, this moment that I had been avoiding, down to the tear drops I knew would fall the moment I stepped onto her sacred surface, was happening.
I stripped myself bare, down to my flesh and bones and beating heart, and unrolled my mat, turning up my latest musical love affair.

Here I go, I thought. Here I go, on my own, alone—me and my tears.

But they didn’t—the tears, which have been leaving little puddles everywhere I go, didn’t fall from my eyes and my body didn’t crumble to the ground.
Instead, I felt myself swell with strength—my body moved, my breath took over and I could feel myself shed the layers of grief and sorrow that had begun to weigh me down.
I took myself by surprise, of that, there is no doubt. I moved and moved and played with standing on my hands and standing on my head—I could smell my body and watch my rolls as I moved, my eye at first critical and then softening into my marks.
I took myself through backbend after backbend, spending longer and longer each time, begging my lungs to shake themselves free of the quicksand of grief that was clinging on as if it was the end of the world.
The truth of is this is the end of a chapter; the end of my world as I know it and everything is both an ending and a new beginning; it’s terrifying.
I thought that great love, real love, true love, was the kind that would sustain and hold us through every storm that would pass; I thought that what it meant to be in love was to hold on for dear life and to never let go, no matter how violent the waves.

But what I am learning is that even in the goodbye, we can love like the ocean.

And that maybe, this love, the love that starts the process of unwinding two lives, two beating hearts; the love that slowly starts to separate books that have hugged together for some time on the shelves, a thin layer of dust marrying them together; the love that stacks dishes and cutlery that have become the best of friends—the love that talks about where the four-legged beast that I jokingly-but-very-seriously call our kid is going to live, is the biggest love that there is.
Goodbyes, though full of sad nights relearning how to take a starfish shape in the bed at night, of awkward conversations and the random explosion of tears, are when our love shines through in its purest form.
The day I find a new place to lay my head, I will dream of the creak in the stairs and the dance of light through the windows in this old house; I will remember the weight of you sinking into bed beside me, late at night or early in the morning, our four-legged love carving a space for himself between us.
I will remember each moment, for they are imprinted in my heart, that beating, broken, bloody thing in my chest.
I will dream of you happy and free—of your hands in the dirt and your eyes shaped like a camera, a jungle of garden surrounding your silver-headed self.
I think of this all, as I move, slower now and sink deeper, now.
I settle my body into stillness but for a moment; the grief is not gone but the anxiety has lessened enough for me to stop moving and to feel this vibrate through my heart:

We will recover from this, I know; some day soon, I will laugh out loud at more than animals on trampolines—and light will bounce back into your eyes as we speak. Our story will always be ours, and we have learned, through this surreal, foreign land, what love truly is. 

For now, I will learn how to say goodbye in these sweet and sorrowful days, and continue to love as fiercely as the sea.

 

I am my mother's daughter.

At 4:09 p.m. on Friday, March 25th, 2016, one day after her 58th anniversary of marriage to my father, my mother quietly died. It had been a busy few days; she had come home for good from the hospital only on Wednesday, her last wish to be at home. That day, she stared out her front window for hours from the hospital bed set up in the living room. Visitors came and went, there were bites of pudding and strawberry and saltine. And there was waiting.

Even when a death is impending and expected, even when the last few months or years of life have been full of pain, when it suddenly starts happening in earnest, when the focus becomes getting busy dying instead of getting busy living, it all seems too sudden and fast. In the last three weeks, I felt my mother's rapid decline and started grasping, gasping, desperate to keep her close.

Birth, living, dying, death. They are all messy and natural and mundane, and yet feel like they should be so much more important. How dare the world continue to go on as if nothing is wrong when I am losing my mother? I will never again smell the hollow of her neck that I associate with comfort; never hear her say, "I love you," or "Oh, for fun!" with a clap of her arthritic hands when she finds something particularly enjoyable. I tally the losses, all the little things that I wish I'd realized were for the last time. I was mildly insulted that her garden hadn't violated every law of nature and exploded with blooms a month or two early, just for her.

My mother taught us, all of us, about unconditional love. She taught us both in word and in action that people are who they are and are worthy of love regardless of their imperfections. She taught gentleness, but was the fiercest mama bear, and we, all of her children, learned from that, and our children, her grandchildren, may or may not appreciate it. She was a matriarch who ruled with a wide open heart and knotted apron strings, who taught us well and then let us find our own wings to fly, even when those wings took us in a direction she'd rather we not have gone- and then, even then, she loved us anyway.

I have said, and heard this echoed by my sisters, that I want to be exactly like my mom when I grow up. I feel so lucky to have called her friend in my adult years, although the road there was rocky. Her love of flowers, trees, and all things nature (except for squirrels) is something she passed on, as well. I will always feel most at peace with my hands or feet in the dirt, smelling soil rich with life and potential, coaxing plants from seed or bulb.

Friday morning didn't feel special. Uncle Bruce, Mom's oldest living brother, and his wife, Kathy, were visiting. We ate breakfast, I rubbed Mama with essential oils, gave her medication and sponged her mouth out with lemon water. The hospice nurse came, and then the bath aide, for a "spit and polish." They left, and Dad and Cheryl went out for groceries.

Mom died not fifteen minutes later. It was so quiet, and gentle, and unexceptional, the leaving of this exceptional woman. A deep breath, and then another, and then no more. I held her in my arms, told her she was loved, and let her go, my head on her chest, listening to her generous heart beat its last beats. And then I smelled that spot at the hollow of her throat, and I rubbed her down with oil and tears and so much love.

I am my mother's daughter. I am reminded of this every time I look in the mirror, every time I speak to my children, every time I dig in the dirt or feel too much or bake a loaf of bread or hold my children close. I am my mother's daughter, and I can't imagine it any other way.

I did not cry on Wednesday.

I feel like I should have. And I didn't cry the week before that, or the first week of October, or any of the other times over the last year that we have lost multiple people to absolutely senseless violence.

I didn't cry because I am so very numb. Do you understand? There have been so many appalling crimes against humanity, the earth, and the inhabitants of it in my lifetime that I am just done. I am especially done when I think about the two biggest reasons for these crimes:

Religion and Profit.

Late last night, my children and I sat together around the island in the hub of our home--the kitchen. I'd probably had a little too much to drink; nothing like alcohol to numb the numbness, right? I apologized to their sweet and shining faces for the world they are inheriting. I charged them with saving the world, and do you know what they asked?

"How, Mama?"

I don't know. I don't know, dear ones. I do know that in the last twenty years, I have seen the rights of many taken away: rights that are inalienable, that shouldn't be taken away. I have seen blame placed. I have seen rampant fear fed and fueled by a media that hasn't been impartial for a very long time. I have seen so many people form opinions from sound bites and headlines without question or further investigation, without considering where the information is coming from.

I feel that I've failed you both; that this world, in the beginning of the sixth mass extinction (yes, really, and if you haven't read the research, I'd recommend pulling your head out of the sand), is no longer salvageable. But we can't think that way, or we might as well all just drown ourselves now. We have to try, for as long as we have this crazy beautiful world, we have to try to save it. And "thoughts and prayers" just aren't going to cut it.

So this morning, while I watched the sun come up and listened to the train and watched the crows converging to some distant, unknowable place, I thought about how. And this is what I came up with.

Find your passion. The world is too full of injustices to focus on all of it; you will find yourself overwhelmed. Find something that you are passionate about and fight. Work your ass off to be heard, to make it right. Environment, gun control, feminism, animal rights, ecology. . .whatever cause makes your heart ignite. Make your life about serving those people and causes who need a voice.

Don't waste yourself on silly pettiness. Don't stoop to talking shit about others, don't numb your brain with useless fodder. We are so over-inundated with media, unimportant creams and clothes and surgeries and diets and trolling, opinion pieces vomited from behind the anonymity of computer screens. Understand that you can choose what to let in to your brain, and you can choose what you think about it. And if you don't agree, or you don't like it, and you don't find it important enough to change it, leave it be and walk away.

Think critically. Always. Consider the source of everything. Who is profiting from the information? Where is the proof? Can the information be backed up from other, independent sources? Is the information or proof based on testimonials? Can the proof be reproduced? Are those spouting or selling the information being paid or benefiting in some way? Does the information mesh with what you already know to be true? Does it challenge your beliefs? Analyze your reaction to the information. What are questions you can ask about it?

Find common ground. It is so easy to stay safe in and among people and environments we are comfortable with, but nothing gets done when we are divisive and fighting, and as long as we are all taking sides, we will not find common ground. If we can agree on a few things- for example, that mass shootings shouldn't happen, and are definitely a problem in the U.S.- then we can start looking at what can be done about them. That is how this country is supposed to work. We learned it in preschool, watching Sesame Street- cooperation, and compromise. An awful lot of people in Washington have forgotten that.

Speak with integrity and honor. Follow your well-thought and researched words with action. Don't bother with lip service, and don't waste your time on those who do. And for fucksake, don't bother praying.

you can be the ripest, juciest peach in the world. . .

Or your job can be the best, most amazing, dream job come true in the world...

But that doesn't mean that it's the best job in the world for you. Or that you like peaches. Or something.

I started my dream job last January. 911 call taking. An incredible position with a really great group of people in a supportive environment with a director who "gets it." I was learning new things every. single. day. My 12 hour shifts allowed for several days off a week with my family. The benefits were amazing. I got to help people, be present for people, bear witness to their worst and darkest days, and say, "I am here for you until help arrives."

And then I started actual dispatch training. I hated it. I felt such a disconnect from everything I loved about call taking. I felt like many of the officers I dispatched for didn't take their safety nearly as seriously as I did. I wrestled with my heart about what I would possibly do if I lost one of those officers on my watch. My resting heart rate, usually in the low 60s, shot up to 98. Ninety-eight. That is not healthy, especially when you have a history of PSVT. I never took my blood pressure, but I'm sure it was sky high, too. I stopped eating much at all, I started drinking more coffee and eating more sugar. I stopped sleeping much. I stopped exercising, period. No yoga, no running, no weights. I had a really bad flare up of my rheumatoid arthritis in my fingers. I was a freaking mess.

I was in survival mode. I felt a strangely physical sensation of a disconnect between my head and my body, like I was a life-sized bobble head. Yes, really. I don't recommend it. In hindsight, I now recognize what was happening--I had to stop doing all the things I do to keep me sane and healthy, because, in my world, this new job was incompatible with my sanity and my health, and had I continued to do all the things that keep me mentally and physically healthy, I would have recognized and stopped that much sooner.

But I didn't. I kept on because I wanted to be a perfect fit for the job. I wanted to provide for my family, make sure they were healthy and taken care of. But because Mama is the glue in our house, the rest of the family was suffering. Yes, we had great health insurance and a nice monetary cushion, but most of that money was spent eating out or on groceries that went to waste, since default food for my Others is cereal. I couldn't remember the last time our house smelled like a home-cooked meal, or freshly baked bread, and--most distressing--I couldn't remember the last time the walls of our house had rung with laughter.

That was unacceptable. So I quit.

I've had three job offers. I accepted one. I'll let you know when it comes through.

Our relationships, our interactions, our interconnectedness in this web of humanity. . .these are what are important. We get this one life. I'm not going to waste it.

who knew you could be stuck in such a deep, dark hole at this high an elevation?

so much has changed in the last year, and yet so much has remained the same.

 I finally have a job that gives us some breathing room financially, and it is something that I love doing and that challenges me every day.  It also, unfortunately, provides me with an even more skewed view of the world, as I come in contact with people having the worst days of their lives for 12 hours straight, 4 days in a row.

I have friends in the high desert, I suppose.  People who, if I could get out from under this web of grief, would be excellent company.  I feel, though, like I've been the one putting out the effort repeatedly, with no return on the investment. This saddens me, and at some point I just decided to quit expending the energy.

That left me with two things--family and home. Home is no longer a sanctuary; the neighborhood where we had but one street of houses next to us when we bought our house two years ago has become one of the busiest roads in our area of town.  In just over a year, we had two major subdivisions pop up around us.  I can no longer sit in my yard and think.  Even inside, I have the constant sound of traffic.  Family is still the same, with one child always away, one child with me, and husband working over the mountain every week.

I miss my mother in law almost every day.  I am so grateful I was able to spend some of her last days with her.  I miss my own mother daily, too, and she isn't even gone yet, but I know the day is coming. I think I would like to just curl up with my head in her lap for a very long while.

I am done with all of this. I have a desperate need to look within, to calm my heart and soul, but the chatter and noise surrounding me is so loud it prevents me from doing so.

the days passed with morphine and roses

The phone rang this morning at 0220.  "It's done," my husband said, his voice low and broken.  "She's gone."

On Sunday morning, as Ma declined all her regular medications and any treats but ice chips and ginger ale, after I'd picked the dead flowers out of bouquets covering every surface and brought in new blooms from her garden to freshen up her night table, I started thinking about what we as a culture do for ritual in death and dying, and what I came up with was sorely lacking.  I hate funerals and always have; I swore the wake I attended at age 19 for my friend Tree was the last funeral I would be present at- I had lost 15 people dear to me in less than 7 years, and after multiple funerals accompanied by wracking sobs, perfumed black clothing, and waxy corpses, found that modern religious (and secular) death rituals kind of suck.

So.  I googled it.  I knew that I would not be present for Ma's death, knew that she would last maybe to Tuesday, but I wanted to do something to recognize this work of dying, something to celebrate the passing of her.  Being an atheist, the rituals of most Christian groups didn't appeal to me, but I loved the simplicity of the bathing and wrapping of the body after death that turned up again and again in so many religious customs.  I had been massaging Ma's swollen feet and legs with lemon and lavender essential oils every day, anyway, and so when I read that pagans give baths to their dead and dying with rosemary to cleanse and protect the body on its journey, it seemed natural to add that to the others.  This time, though, I worked every bit of Ma's bare skin I could find.  I gave her an angel bath of oil and fragrance and love, and she watched me, eyes locked on mine, and I couldn't help but cry. 

Like most rituals of dying--in which the ceremonies are more for the living than the dying--this bathing was more for me than for her, my way of saying thank you and goodbye to this woman I've loved for a few years but have just recently grown to admire for her stubbornness and tenacity, her optimism and her great love of family, her unwillingness to complain even in the midst of great pain, and her wide open, forgiving heart.

Sunday's sun tipped toward the west and it was time for me to leave, to get back to Bend and the work of living.  I leaned in close to tell her goodbye-- that I was leaving and likely wouldn't see her again.  She said, "No."  And held me close, and I told her that I didn't think her Jesus would come for her while there was a heathen in the house.  She laughed and said she'd like to see me in heaven.  I told her I didn't think that was likely.

I was so happy just knowing her here.