The Plow of Grief

Here I am writing a blog post about my mom’s passing before I’ve finished writing the story of it in my own personal journal.

But this isn’t actually a post about my mom’s passing. It’s an offering of peace, a prayer for healing that came through a simple question that was offered to me in the pre-dawn light on the desert highway as we were driving home from being with mom as she was here (and then gone).

If someone were to ask me what grief feels like at this point in my journey of losing my mom, I would tell you it’s like a plow, sinking deep into the soil - lifting, turning, unearthing - exposing deep earth to the air and the light. For better or worse (always for better in the end).

Of course it is.

It was a Tuesday and I was in what turned out to be a very holy conversation with a beloved and inspired soul about the past and healing and the ways in which I have believed I am too damaged to create and receive the goodness my heart longs for. That conversation turned my heart toward my mom with more honesty, forgiveness, and openness than I’ve ever felt before. It was nothing short of sacred - especially in light of all “the work” I’ve done to heal from the inevitable wounds that come when being mothered by a wounded person. Mom became one of my most beloved friends into my adulthood and so much forgiveness and love was already there but this one piece…whoa, big…and she was on my mind every minute and held in my heart with deeper love and compassion in the following days than I’ve ever had access too in my roundedness.

Then it was Friday afternoon. We were busy getting ready to make the 14 hour drive to visit family - especially mom who was slipping deeper into dementia - out of state for a week. We were scheduled to leave the next morning but a text and then a phone call during lunch and everything changed.

“Mom had a stroke last night. You might want to jump on a plane instead of drive.” I buried my face in my cardigan at the restaurant table where when the call came. I hung up, barely able to breathe. I looked up plane tickets - the airport was five minutes away and I had my purse. Vince could just drop me off and leave in the morning with the car to come meet me. It turned out that there wasn’t a flight that would get me there sooner than we could drive there so we got our food to go and raced home. An hour later we were back in the car, on the road, and I was breathing again.

Mom’s desk, as she left it.

We made it in time to be with mom before she transitioned. There’s too much holiness to share in one blog post happened between our arrival at 5 AM on Saturday morning and 8:26 PM Sunday evening when she released her last breath. Then the business of funeral arrangements, writing the talk I was to give at her funeral, helping my beloved step-dad and siblings make the millions of decisions that need to be made. Will she be buried in her wedding ring? When do we meet to dress her for viewing? Who will be the pall bearers? How many will be at the family luncheon?

My beloved step dad loving mom every minute.

The night she passed, we surrounded her bed for more than an hour until the most compassionate and kind souls from the funeral home came to pick up and care for her body. That hour was holy time with my siblings and family. In retrospect, I am not surprised that my soul felt safe in that holy hour to allow a grief I could have never imagine move through my body. I made sounds I’ve never made before, my bones felt like they were going to break through my skin, my husband and sister held my ribs in my body with their loving embraces while my wailing threatened to heave them right out and through the walls.

And then it passed.

My step dad and siblings.

And throughout the rest of the week I felt UNREASONABLY comforted and held. I was even able to speak honoring words at mom’s funeral without choking on my grief which feels like a miracle unto itself.

As unexpected as the details of how that moment of grief would feel, what was even more unexpected was the deep abandonment I felt in the days afterwards. There were faces I expected to see at my mom’s funeral - people that have loved me my whole life who would SURELY want to be there to offer arms of comfort - who weren’t there.

Thier faces weren’t there.

Texts or messages of love from them weren’t there.

A single note of condolence, an emoji, a “care” reaction on a Facebook post about my mom - not there.

Their silence had been obvious to me in the days leading up to mom’s passing but I wasn’t bothered by it: “I’m sure they’ll just tell me in person at the funeral". (It’s been a month and still…)

Back to that morning when the question that liberated me came.

I was sobbing to Vince about this feeling of abandonment, questioning everything I believed about who I thought I was to the people I was looking for, aching to know where I stand now that my whole foundation has just shifted. I held tightly to the steady and reliable love of Vince, my dad, siblings, step dad, and our kids and I was doing everything I could to be at peace with that “being enough”.

In a moment of despair I said to Vince, “How long will I pour love into these relationships just to not have it reciprocated?”

He reached for my hand, the car moving at the same speed the waves of heartbreak kept crashing over me, and said “No, the question you need to be asking yourself is how long you’ll resent them for not being who you wish they’d be.”

And just like that the car shot out of the gravitational pull of the earth and I was suddenly free floating in libration.

My pain wasn’t a result of my unreciprocated love. My pain was a result of wishing, longing, aching, for people to be something other than they were and for MY sense of value and belovedness to be attached to how they did or didn’t show up for me in the most heartbreaking experience of my life.

“Was.” (As if it’s not layered work that is still ongoing.)

They have their reasons and they are all valid. Even if one of their reasons is “what we wanted to do was more important to us than being there for you.”

I don’t say this with sarcasm. It’s actually incredibly (even if painfully) liberating to allow people to care what they care about, show up or not show up however they actually want to, and to choose to release MYSELF from the resentment. If the question of how long I will love them without it being reciprocated is ever a question worth asking, the answer will be found in the counter question of how long will I consciously, relentlessly CHOOSE to love people even when they don’t reciprocate in the way I think love would.

I want the answer to be “forever”. I’ll get there, in time.

For now, I’m still grieving - not just the loss of my mom but also for the loss of what I thought love looked like from others. I am deeply, wordlessly grateful for the wisdom and love Vince offered me in that question. Because of that, my grief can be clean and (mostly) not muddied by resentment and expectations.

I will keep doing the work of healing and remembering who I want to be, even in grief. Creative, open, unhurried, curious, surrendered, patient and trusting in Divine help to navigate being alive and human and a loving force with other imperfect humans.

Mom’s 123 journals.

Mom’s last journal entry. Her handwriting had changed and yet her love for Mike had not.