Just a note to let you know...
...that last week's visit with MFS, MPS toward the end of the week and MPNP in the middle of the week was wonderful, all I'd hoped for and more...and their leaving, yesterday, was much more difficult than I'd imagined it would be. It seems I've finally figured out that my major grief hurdle is getting past the absence of my mother in my home and my life; it's a HUGE hurdle; one that stuns me every time I find myself facing it alone, again...so, it's probably good that I have no more visits to which to look forward, at least for the foreseeable future.
    A few aspects of the visit that have helped me:

• My mother's rocking chair is no longer "my mother's" rocking chair. It was used so much during this last visit and I was aware enough of it being used (apparently, according to MCS, she used it a lot during the first visit wave but I was so oblivious to everything I didn't notice) that it is now, primarily, a rocking chair and, secondarily, my mother's rocking chair.
• I feel as though each of my sisters and I have renewed our bonds and I am firmly set within my extended family. This is a wonderful feeling.
• Upon realizing that I have this HUGE emotional hurdle to overcome in regard to being alone again, it seems I'm also discovering that I also have a fairly fearless attitude toward any death business I now have to conduct. I feel that, well, I've lost my mother, whose life I allowed, without apology or regret, to intertwine so intimately with mine that upon her death a part of me also died (don't assume this means what it appears to mean on the surface); upon her death I also lost my life's former purpose and my life's direction; thus, I have nothing left to lose, which actually makes me feel incredibly empowered in regard to going up against any governmental or business concerns which may (or may not) loom in my very immediate future while completing death business. I simply cannot be knocked any lower than I already am...thus, I figure, I am in the perfect position to block anyone's attempts to do so.
• It has been a most amazing experience to discover my mother's legacy in my sisters; habits and attitudes of my mother's that have been familiar to me in my sisters but that I didn't associate with my sisters until my mother was, to put it bluntly, out of the way. People do, indeed, live on in those with whom their lives were intertwined and, as well, these legacies bring extraordinary comfort to those of us who remain "in the way".

    I find it astonishing that I am having trouble resurrecting the pleasure I spent a lifetime enjoying in being alone. I know that pleasure is in "here", someplace; but I am having trouble finding it because I am still in the habit of listening for the sounds of my mother's life, especially when I attempt to involve myself in activities that I not only pursued when living alone but also pursued, intermittently and with difficulty, while I was my mother's companion. What seems like hundreds of times every day I am stopped in my tracks by the almost palpable barrier of my mother's absence. I'm discovering that the habit into which I fell of discussing everything with my mother, absolutely everything, which I'm glad I did, as I believe it was one of the key elements that allowed the preservation of my mother's dignity right up to her last breath, was a habit upon which I came to rely heavily, as well. You'd think that this would be an easy hurdle to clear, wouldn't you, simply by continuing to talk to my mother, but I am not in the habit of talking to the dead immediately after they die. I've discovered that I have a type of internal sacred proscription against talking so soon to the dead; I imagine that they are busy reorienting themselves and that it is good manners not to immediately intrude upon this process. I tried talking to Mom, yesterday, out of desperation after my sisters left. It helped, some. But, overall, I wasn't able to continue long enough for the relief to take a solid hold. Today I talked to her not at all. And, as well, the talk in which I find myself indulging isn't anything spiritually significant, like apologies for mistakes I think I might have made or explanations for misunderstandings that I feel cropped up between her and me; in fact, I have none of these urges. It's, simply, our day-to-day banter; which kept her oriented in life and, much to my surprise, kept me oriented, as well. I am so out of practice with my "old" orientation, which, philosophically, I still value, highly, but, within which, realistically, I feel strangely inept. It's not like riding a bicycle years after the last time one was ridden.
    So, anyway, I've begun, I think, a protracted and intense reorientation period. I'm excited, actually, that I no longer have anything to distract me from this process but, oh, my, it is difficult. I find myself often thinking of something my mother said to me when she asked me to be her final companion after having lived alone for nine years after my father's death and having appeared to have done it with zest and success, "This living alone business isn't all it's cracked up to be." At the time she said it I understood it from her point of view because she was not ever a lover or seeker of solitude, but I didn't understand it organically. I get it, on an organic level, now. I have faith that this is "a good thing", for me, for my character, for whatever ability I have to be compassionate and empathetic. I'm just perplexed about how I am, now, going to integrate my life-long love of solitude with my decade-and-a-half interest in, well, the type of fundamental companionship I shared with my mother. I remember, for instance, how I used to gripe in this journal about not being able to read "the way I like to read" (not sure if that's a direct quote of myself but I am sure I wrote very similar complaints here). Now, I'm finding, I can't read for very long before I become aware that I am listening for an interruption and the act of realizing I'm listening in vain distracts me from being able to read.
    In the meantime, I'm, immediately, a little confounded in the wake of the end of this last visit and expect to remain so for another day or two, so it might be a couple of days before I get that recently promised book review out.
    So, anyway, you know, later...
- posted by Gail Rae @ 19:20   email  this post