“Then it’s one foot, then the other as you step out onto the road
how much weight?
how much weight?
Then it’s how long and how how far and how many times
before it’s too late?

And every day you gaze upon the sunset with such love
and intensity
It’s almost ….it’s almost as if
if you could crack the code
then you’d finally understand what this all means.

But it you could….do you think you would
trade in all the pain and suffering?
Ah, but then you’d miss the beauty of the light upon this earth
and the sweetness of leaving it.
( Jane Siberry, Calling All Angels)

Feel weird. Sad. Mild frissons of panic. Phyllis called on Tuesday and left a message on voicemail to call her back. When I did her first words were, “Mom’s gone”. Just like that. Gone. There is a tightness in my throat and chest. I’ve cried–but it’s like there’s something I can’t express, something tears don’t capture. I guess the feelings are so complex that they don’t just come out purely–grief, anger, love. None of them sums it up. I don’t feel the agonizing pain of losing someone whose heart touches mine daily–like my closest friends or Tiger and Big. Part of me wishes I felt that, but there is also a part of me that never wants to feel that. I remember once when Tiger disappeared for a long time, and I thought he was gone. The pain was so intense that even when I found him, for awhile I wished I’d never let love into my heart so deeply.

There is such heaviness though, and the tightness in throat, shoulders, chest. And the sense that I”d like to distract myself–write emails, surf the net, DO stuff. Sitting down in the quiet and just being is more difficult than usual. I feel more anxiety than usual about the cats–that something will happen to them.

How strange that the day before she died I posted here starting out with my picture of the vulture, a symbol of death and rebirth.

She was so unhappy at the end. Phyllis and I talked last week about Mom’s birthday and about Christmas coming up and that she wasn’t even aware of it. I wondered if there was a present I could send that she could enjoy somehow. Or maybe if just sending something mattered, even if she wasn’t aware of it. We said how it was like she was already gone, but wasn’t. And how, at this point, it seemed like it would be better for her if she could go. And now she has. But that doesn’t feel “good” either. I wish I could know somehow that she was out there–free. That her soul was out there at one with itself. I wish I could sense she was at peace. I wish I knew that she was somewhere knowing she’d accomplished so much in this life, under such difficult odds. That she struggled her way out of a horror of a childhood, and through determination ,made a better life for her own kids. Even if her heart and core were shattered.

I’m so profoundly grateful I went to see her last month and was able to love her with heart wide open. But it also is so painful to remember getting up to go and hearing her say like a wistful child, “ I wish I could come with you.” All the wishes and hopes and disappointments and pain. But also richness and love. My friend Ricky wrote to me, “ I am grateful to your mother for sending you out into the world as crazy as a loon–and the more spectacular for it.” My friend John wrote “Being raised in a crazy way creates openings that dullness and pretended simplicity cannot…there was realness in that craziness–there was an aliveness there…dark aliveness but not numbness.”

As when I lost my house, my friends have touched me so deeply that it is humbling. I feel like I never quite understand why my friends love me as they do. I don’t know that my actions out in the world deserve it. I guess it’s about heart, soul. Thomas Moore says “To the soul, there is hardly anything more healing than friendship…friendship is an attraction and magnetism of souls.” To have friends email me or leave voice messages saying “I love you–call ANYTIME”, is indeed more healing than I can say. So touching it is almost painful. I think of my mom again as I write these things–I don’t remember her ever having had that kind of friendship, which makes my heart ache. So it is all jumbled again–the love, the heart healing, the pain, the heart sadness.

I was looking through some old pictures this week trying to find this one I had taken years ago to symbolize death and rebirth. I had arranged a glass ball of the planet Pluto, and an iris from my garden. For me, in a simple way, it kind of captures the darkness and mystery and the beauty of new life.

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Next day

Talked to Ricky after writing yesterday which really made me feel better Grounded. As I walk outside today or do things around the house (like paint the black bud vase turquoise and copper, or mop my floors with scented water) I am just letting all the thoughts and feelings come and go. It is a way for me to move through it, for it to be a process rather than a stuck place. I try to think of moments when I saw her really happy and engaged. I try to remember her really loving something, being into it. She did not see herself as being good at anything, certainly not as being creative. Not even with things women of her generation might have taken pride in–gardening, knitting, baking the perfect cake. So what do I remember her glowing about?………………………Dancing. She took dance lessons with dad at the Elks Club. And oh how she did love that, now that I think about it. She would try to teach me sometimes–the fox trot, the waltz, the rhumba. Putting a record on the big old stereo, she’d dance over to me, and her body would be charged with energy, a funny grin on her face. “Look, like this..one, two, three, backstep.” And she’d wax poetic talking about how when you had a partner that was really good, like the instructor, you could just let go and follow–smoothe as silk.

And she like having people down in her bar having fun–mixing them STRONG cocktails. She loved serving shrimp cocktail and cheeseballs and Swedish meatballs. And having platters of Christmas cookies that people would moan over. She wasn’t into the cooking part so much as into the people enjoying her hospitality. She liked people having a good time. Phyllis tells me that in the Alzheimer’s care home, she would sing and dance, entertaining everyone. “You put your left foot in, you put your left out. Then you do the hokey pokey and you shake it all about.” I remember that one.

And then as I am thinking these thoughts, I stop a moment, startled. What I love most is to dance, to be in movement. And just last week I wrote of imagining my home as a temple where people could come sometimes to experience the ecstasy of the movement, of the creative flow. Maybe very different iterations, but a spark of the same energy? It feels good to think that. And the love I feel for her thinking it. There were too many years where I had to work through not wanting to be like her at all.

I ended up buying her a Christmas present before I found out. A blend of essential oils called Peace and Calming. I had hoped that the attendants at the home could dab it on her once a day. I’d like to think of something to do with it now, to wish her peace and calm wherever she is. With all my heart I wish that for her–for all of us.