This week, my coworker lost her Mom. It was not sudden or unexpected but that really didn't change anything. After all, we are never ready to lose our Moms.
When we got the word that her Mom had passed, my heart sank for her. I, like most of us that have laid our Moms to rest, naturally thought back to the day we lost our own Mothers and what its like to live in a world without a Mom.
Love them or hate them, you know most Mothers love their children in a most unique way. For the majority of us it was our Moms that rocked us and cared for us and hugged us and kissed us. They took care of us when we were sick and made sure we had what we needed and sometimes what we wanted. Right or wrong, they did their best for us. No Mom is perfect, they are human. They make mistakes. Lots of them. So do we.
But in our lives, we are given but one Mom at birth. We were paired up by some guiding force and when we were born, the life of our Moms changed. For a time, she lived a selfless life, putting her child first and her own wants and needs secondary. She made mistakes and more mistakes. But she never gave up on her child. She loved her child with uniqueness that is unmatched.
This week made me think about Moms. All the Moms, the new ones and the old ones. I thought about the bond that exists between Moms and their children. How all their hopes and dreams were bundled up in a noisy, messy and very demanding package. Yet, when it came to their babies, there was nothing more beautiful, more inspiring or more heaven sent in this entire world.
The journey a Mom travels is long and exhausting. It is also filled with indescribable love. There a moments of joy that make all the sleepless nights fade into some distant obscure memory that leaves barely a trace as the years go by.
Love them or hate them for all their faults, they are our Moms. And when they die, a huge part of us dies with them. That part is our childhood and the anchor which grounded us to this world. We are left to pick up the pieces of a life that seems foreign in many respects. If we are lucky to have aged gracefully before letting go of our Mom's hand for the last time, then the road our Mom's traveled seems clear and understandable. If we are lucky enough, we can forgive them for their mistakes and embrace the best part of what they gave us.
Without a doubt, Moms shape and mold us into who we are today. We remember what they taught us and their mistakes taught us how to avoid pitfalls in our own lives.
The world has one less Mom this week and that is a sadness we can all share.
Showing posts with label death. Show all posts
Showing posts with label death. Show all posts
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Fire and Flames
Before Logan's death, I had learned to be very conscious of what I ate and drank. During that time of my nutritional enlightenment, food went from being mindless eating to "eyes wide open" events.
I can remember growing up and trusting that the food we ate each day was healthy and a nourishment to our bodies. We ate vegetables from the garden and chickens from our own coop. It was the dawn of commercial foods and foods of convenience. Even then, we ate without fear. I can remember those TV dinners that were actually covered with foil and only heated in the oven. We had them on occasion (and they were 19 cents each) but most of our meals were prepared from scratch in our own kitchen.
I'm not even sure I can recall how or when I learned what today's "food" really was. How it was delicious but void of nutrients. How even though we were overweight as a people, we were starving to death. How added ingredients in almost all commercial foods did nothing but fatten us up and contributed to most common health problems and diseases. How eating right can help the body heal itself. I learned and then I forgot.
Logan's death left everything blurry. Nothing made sense and we stopped being who were were before he died. It was as if one moment we were standing on dry ground, the next moment we were suddenly tossed into an angry stormy sea, barely able to keep our heads above the constantly moving water, holding on to each others hands in an effort to survive. In those days and months, that was all we could do. We just kept surviving. No real passion existed. It is as if the mind and the heart become disconnected, unable to communicate. We became shells of who we were. We looked the same for the most part but our souls had become shallow. We became one dimensional, thin and fragile. That's what sudden loss and grief can do to you.
It has been 18 months since that horrible day in October of 2009. It took a full 7 months before I could begin to feel anything. But I still didn't know who I was, what I liked, what I wanted or what was important. Very slowly the fog of grief began to lift. Logan no longer occupied our every thought. His memory no longer invaded our sleep.
There was guilt in letting that pain go and maybe we didn't let it go as much as we tucked it away in a drawer like some valued possession we hid for safe keeping. If we did that did it mean that we were forgetting him? The simple act of remembering him was to put a fire to gasoline. The end result was unspeakable pain. I think we understood that if we were to survive, if we were to find a purpose in our lives again, we were to live a life that could include joy and beauty, we had to manage our source of pain. We had to wrestle grief into that tiny box, put it in the drawer and close it. It would always be there and when we felt the need to remember, we could take it out, turn it this way and that and recall every detail. This examination would happen at a time of our choosing when the tears were hidden from the world.
For me, at least, I try not to open that drawer. I know where it is, I know whats in it. For the sake of my sanity, I try to leave it be. As time goes on, I can write about whats in that box and why it changed my world and why it has changed me.
This summer I began to remember all I had learned. I remembered it with a clarity and understanding that I had not had before. For so long I had neglected my physical body while my mental body healed. I failed to see through the fog that they are both critical to my survival and my ultimate healing.
I have embraced that part of me that is healing from the inside out, starting with my food choices. It has been a month and as I nourish my body with healthy foods, vitamins and minerals, I feel renewed strength. It is part of my second life here on Earth, a life that unfolds before me, completely new and different. Yet there are pieces of the old me that are there lying around for collection and use. I must have forgotten where I put them as I seem to find them one at a time.
Learning about the new me, the post October 2009 me is an adventure. The journey, including the fog, has forged a stronger woman. I have walked through the fire and found that instead of completely consuming me as I thought it would, it simply left me with calloused feet. Feet that can withstand both fire and flames.
The experience will serve me well in the future as life often throws at us what we think we cannot survive. Yet we do. How we survive is up to us. We simply need the will and desire to do so. Life takes care of the rest.
I can remember growing up and trusting that the food we ate each day was healthy and a nourishment to our bodies. We ate vegetables from the garden and chickens from our own coop. It was the dawn of commercial foods and foods of convenience. Even then, we ate without fear. I can remember those TV dinners that were actually covered with foil and only heated in the oven. We had them on occasion (and they were 19 cents each) but most of our meals were prepared from scratch in our own kitchen.
I'm not even sure I can recall how or when I learned what today's "food" really was. How it was delicious but void of nutrients. How even though we were overweight as a people, we were starving to death. How added ingredients in almost all commercial foods did nothing but fatten us up and contributed to most common health problems and diseases. How eating right can help the body heal itself. I learned and then I forgot.
Logan's death left everything blurry. Nothing made sense and we stopped being who were were before he died. It was as if one moment we were standing on dry ground, the next moment we were suddenly tossed into an angry stormy sea, barely able to keep our heads above the constantly moving water, holding on to each others hands in an effort to survive. In those days and months, that was all we could do. We just kept surviving. No real passion existed. It is as if the mind and the heart become disconnected, unable to communicate. We became shells of who we were. We looked the same for the most part but our souls had become shallow. We became one dimensional, thin and fragile. That's what sudden loss and grief can do to you.
It has been 18 months since that horrible day in October of 2009. It took a full 7 months before I could begin to feel anything. But I still didn't know who I was, what I liked, what I wanted or what was important. Very slowly the fog of grief began to lift. Logan no longer occupied our every thought. His memory no longer invaded our sleep.
There was guilt in letting that pain go and maybe we didn't let it go as much as we tucked it away in a drawer like some valued possession we hid for safe keeping. If we did that did it mean that we were forgetting him? The simple act of remembering him was to put a fire to gasoline. The end result was unspeakable pain. I think we understood that if we were to survive, if we were to find a purpose in our lives again, we were to live a life that could include joy and beauty, we had to manage our source of pain. We had to wrestle grief into that tiny box, put it in the drawer and close it. It would always be there and when we felt the need to remember, we could take it out, turn it this way and that and recall every detail. This examination would happen at a time of our choosing when the tears were hidden from the world.
For me, at least, I try not to open that drawer. I know where it is, I know whats in it. For the sake of my sanity, I try to leave it be. As time goes on, I can write about whats in that box and why it changed my world and why it has changed me.
This summer I began to remember all I had learned. I remembered it with a clarity and understanding that I had not had before. For so long I had neglected my physical body while my mental body healed. I failed to see through the fog that they are both critical to my survival and my ultimate healing.
I have embraced that part of me that is healing from the inside out, starting with my food choices. It has been a month and as I nourish my body with healthy foods, vitamins and minerals, I feel renewed strength. It is part of my second life here on Earth, a life that unfolds before me, completely new and different. Yet there are pieces of the old me that are there lying around for collection and use. I must have forgotten where I put them as I seem to find them one at a time.
Learning about the new me, the post October 2009 me is an adventure. The journey, including the fog, has forged a stronger woman. I have walked through the fire and found that instead of completely consuming me as I thought it would, it simply left me with calloused feet. Feet that can withstand both fire and flames.
The experience will serve me well in the future as life often throws at us what we think we cannot survive. Yet we do. How we survive is up to us. We simply need the will and desire to do so. Life takes care of the rest.
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