Cry, Cry, Cry

It puzzles me sometimes when I find myself with misty eyes over the thought of missing my mother.  For goober’s sake she’s been gone six years now, you would think I’d be well over the story of loss.  I suppose in fairness, I probably didn’t believe she was really “gone” for the first few years.  Mom can keep to herself sometimes or feel the need to dispose of people on a whim.  I rather believed that she’d come around after a spell.  Because she never did say Good Bye.  She never explained why she would choose to sever the ties that bind us … like email, cell phones, facebook ;).  We use to talk every day on the phone.  We talked about God either directly in gratitude or in Truth it was always the core of our conversation regardless of the topic we picked.  “How is Bliss?”  I would say as she picked up the phone.  Bliss was her German Shepard.  I’m fairly sure Mom wouldn’t have been able to let go of me so easily had she not had Bliss to lean upon.  She adored that dog, it was her best friend in every sense of the word.  The three of them, because Bliss had a buddy Robbie too, would take walks in the woods every day and Mom would tell me stories of horses, or truffles or skunks they would come upon on their hike.  Mom was all about walking.  It represented something to her … perhaps it was a hallmark that her fibromyalgia didn’t completely destroy her body, because she could still take a long walk on the beach.

I never could walk like Mom did, though.  Not even back in the day.  The EDS seems to play havoc with my body in slightly different ways than it does my mother and as it does with each of my children who experience the POTSholes of the hypermobility gene defect in various shades of gray.

I have Mom’s gray hair.  I have the same wrinkles on the back of my hand.  I see the lines in my face in the mirror and I remember her gently aging profile.  Perhaps that’s why I miss her more as time goes by.  My youngest daughter was frustrated the other day with a math problem, which wasn’t really a math problem but a python assignment for class, which of course is really just a metaphore for anytime we find our self lured by the snake who is intent on kicking us out of the Garden.  But in this moment she felt the tears of a thousand helpless hurts and because she is fiercely independent she also felt that sense that it wasn’t “okay” to come to your mother crying.  I let it go at the time, suffice to say I told her it was always alright to come home.  But then last night, when she stopped by (ostensibly to drop off laundry, but in truth she knew I was crying myself last night) I reminded her of what she had said last week about not crying to your mother … and told her as I choked up full of tears … You know, I’d give anything to be able to do that.  And she hugged me gently and said “I know Mom.”  And I wept on her shoulder briefly.

There could be 999 reasons why Mom left.  None of them reasonable in the moment, but all of them perfect as part of the master plan.  All of us, in one form or another do the best we can to balance our pain … unfortunately sometimes that comes at the expense of another person’s bliss.  We try of course to not splash in the pool but we can’t control the ripples in the pond that flow in all directions  from the pebble in our pocket.

So yes, at times beyond logic and common sense I still find myself  befallen with tears as I think about how I miss hearing my Mom’s voice.  The pain passes of course.  Sometimes staying longer than I hoped, but I realize it may well just be my way of spending time with her.  Much like I consider doing my college girl’s laundry spending time with her. 🙂   Eventually it all comes out in the wash.  All of our tears, fears and misplaced memories.  I may not have my mother’s ear to share a shaggy dog story, but my own children have my shoulder to cry upon unconditionally and always.  And of course, in the tender moments they also lend me theirs.  Its okay to cry.   Wherever we are, for whatever reason.  It doesn’t mean we are weak, or that we need to fix anything.  Sometimes the soil needs the rain.  And though it may feel like we will get stuck in the mud if we follow the river of tears … in the end we always make it to the other shore having waded in the water to find our Bliss.