Jan
7, 2020
When the Body is Gone
We rise into the blue mantle of sky. She invites us to soar, to aim these
silver wings toward home. I notice the higher we climb, the greater I
fall. My heart sinks. Mama’s ashes have been ceremoniously put in the crypt.
Her life celebration is complete. We melted our derriere’s working to
empty her condo, to finalize her affairs, to clean up after her life. These the
endless tasks that end all other tasks.
There has been no time for writing, for phoning, for thinking or feeling, only
the drone of doing and my absorption in her stuff. I suppose that’s the way of
mourners. It’s what we do when the body is gone. Each day I press
to be truly helpful, scratching the tasks off my list. Each day I am
discouraged, more for us to sift through.
Now I am tired. Bones are sighing. Eyes drip. I have overlooked my body and
emotions in the wake of her life’s end. I return feeling loss of Mama, my
family, her community, and the warmth of the sunshine state. More than that I feel
the loss of myself. I have changed. Isn’t that all I sought of a
spiritual path? Ego flies at me and states the fact. Massachusetts is
cold.
Christmas has come and gone without gifts or festivities. A year has slipped
across some amorphous edge and moved into another. I wonder what awaits me.
Bills? Projects left undone, all that seemed so important and significant,
pasted on a calendar whose pages did not turn for months, whose meetings were
not held, whose black marks lost their power to push. How easy it is to forget
the numbers and names of blending days. Time lost its segmentation, and its
capacity for organization. Being with what is – is the primary principle of
order.
There have been no meditations or holy rituals, but for rising before dawn with
His Name on my lips, then again at night as I dropped on the quilt of Mama’s
pink bed. Why couldn’t I get under those covers? Jeshua!
Something else quietly looms… rosaries, statues, pictures of Holy Mother, blood
dappled crosses, saints and scapular, prayer cards to Our Lady of Guadalupe and
others. These covered in plastic, a house of saintly things and people covered
in plastic. I could not read them. I repeat, Jeshua!
I am learning from my mother’s transition about strength and love of family, a
love that surpasses woundedness and makes lack of forgiveness unbearable.
I learned how to trust in the cloud of unknowing, leading when I was
blind. I learned to put myself aside seeing how often I put my needs upfront.
My flaws became blatant and hurt me deeply. I found my sister, my brother and
my brother through marriage in a way that felt first time.
Friends, clients, and circles swirled in the memories of my heart, but I
couldn’t reach out. I wanted to write the many lessons… life awareness as gift
in the classroom of death. Mostly I saw that I could live without books,
or readings, mantras or spiritual programs. There were few conversations about
God. I found I could turn to Spirit for everything, just feel with a
question, within. And I can give. Giving is joining and makes us whole
again.
We had several miracles, the latest, a dream. My niece Crystal, who does
not remember dreams, lucidly saw my mother. She entered a restaurant/bar,
radiant, beautiful, happy, dressed in the blue-green garb of Mary, with a
veil, and a circle crowning her head. She stood up in a booth and danced
with Crystal’s 2 year old daughter. There was one other thing of importance in
the dream, a blue-green ship, painted with toddler-like strokes. Perhaps it symbolizes
the innocence of the child of God together with Mama’s moving on.
Crystal confided in me that she had asked Gram to come to her this way, in her
sleep. How moving that she came like Mary, wearing her favorite color,
turquoise. Not a surprise, Mama was not only named Mary, she had consecrated
her life to the Mother of Christ.
How smooth is the path above the world this morning. Angels attend to us. How
simple to let myself be lifted, carried. It occurs to me that all of us
here are making our way home. I whisper, Father, let me follow in the
way appointed me, the way of the open heart, the open mind, the opened
life. Is it possible to open my life a little more?
My heart speaks out, I want that. It is impossibly claustrophobic
in the closet of the temporary I have defined as my life. There is infinitely
more to be given, to be shared, to be discovered. There is plenty more to throw
away.
Blessed New Year Dear Open Heart!
I love You.
MaryBeth
