dragonfly totems follow me to beaches and coastlines.
i get greedy with her memories. being around her handwriting… these things are fading from view. in her house that is no longer her house, pieces of her are fading from cabinets. it’s empty, and still i go searching. wanting something i know i won’t find. a smell, a memory, a lost moment i can tuck away. in her old junk drawer is where i find them… each scrap of paper with her penmanship is a treasure.
“put clothes into dryer”… “take trash out”…
“make lunches”… “starbucks friday 1pm” …
when death hovers, you grab onto whatever bits of life are left and you hold on tight. it feels frantic. like a hand slipping loose at a crowded fair. it’s the riptide that threatens to pull you under. these things i seek and seldom find are the things we took for granted. her handwriting makes me cry because i know i won’t see it again. ever. these papers are treasures i want to keep with me always. me, her little girl, with a pocketful of three year old grocery lists and notes to self.
when i was a kid and i missed my mom, it was because she was in maine.
here. now. driving down the street where she used to live… i allow myself this only on strong days. i find it no coincidence that a good friend lives in the same neighborhood my mother lived in all those years ago. i find comfort in that. in the collision of worlds. she is with me here. now.
it’s strange to drive down these streets, where things seldom change, and see the woods where she walked. to see the cemetery where she stole the flowers she used to decorate her apartments, the college she attended, the life she lived on her own surrounded by friends. here. then. now.
it’s strange.
and comforting.
now when i miss my mom i know i can find her here, in maine.
the other day i was talking to a dear friend of mine, wondering just how much sadder it can get when she dies. crying my fears into the phone of not believing i can deal… with. anything. sadder. than. this.
she reminded me that there’s a release in the dying. she felt it with her father. there’s a release out into the world. and yes, while we know their spirits are trapped in a body full of decay and memory loss, there is freedom in the release. my friend comforted me in the experiences she’s had since her fathers funeral. and how she feels him now even more than when his body was locked in dementia here on earth.
there are many of us on this cusp of motherloss. fatherloss. parentloss. there are many friends who just in this past year have lost their mothers or fathers and now stand on the other side of this. i’m still here in limbo. waiting. cursing the long goodbye as much as i am grateful for it.
absolutely breathe-taking Thank you
.
wrapping you in my heart…
xo
breathing in your words and heart and breathing out light and space and love to you.
“hand slipping loose at the fair”…so heartbreaking. much love to you. i stand on the other side and while it isn’t easy, I find my papa in the breeze, in a glass of wine, in the summer sun.
Your words are always so well thought and I can’t imagine but everything I read here touches my heart.
I was drawn in to read this because I knew what you were feeling and why (when I read it on Flickr). I too had those feelings about my mother when she was dying. I’m on the other side of that now that she has gone. I cried and mourned her before she died and even more when she died. You seem stronger because you’re able to share it … I wasn’t able to and perhaps that’s why I went into a very deep depression when she died. I’m in tears right now just remembering and thinking about it yet somehow there’s a feeling of relief knowing someone else had those kinds of feelings and did some of the same things. I kept notes of hers with her handwriting. I saved some of the last crosswords she had actually attempted to do (she was once a master at them). I even had a friend record her voice message and put it on tape for me so I’d have record of her voice. I kept some of her clothes so I could wear them and feel her and so I could smell her until it was washed away. Sheesh, why am I going on so? I’m not doing anything to ease your emotions. But know that you will find her still with you in many ways, even when she let’s go and is gone. Every once in a while I give a little chuckle or even when I clear my throat a certain way and it startles me because it’s her; exactly her. I see her in my hands and I treasure those little notes and bits of paper.
If anything I have written offends you or makes you sad, I am truly very, very sorry. I do understand.
I too needed to read this post today. I am in the limbo you speak of. I don’t want my mother to leave but it is so painful to see her. She is in anursing home with a colostomy bag, fed by a tube and has a trach, so she cannot speak. I don’t know how much dementia has taken from her, as we cannot speak to eachother (altho i try as i might to read her lips). I visit so often with my 7 year old daughter, to let her know that I am here …. with her….. and maybe part of me wants to be sure she doesn’t forget my face….
wrapping you round in love & light.xo