Poison & Wine

Yesterday was Mom's birthday.  She would have been 63.  It lands 7 days after the anniversary of her death.  I felt peaceful this year around the 11-year mark, wondered how her birthday would feel...all that's predictable is unpredictability.  I woke up at 5:30 and sat down with a cup of coffee and my laptop.  Turned on Christmas music and started writing an email to a friend and had breakfast and Jonathan left for St Spiridon's and then it hit me like a mack truck and drained me out like a newly slaughtered animal.

I missed her so much I could scream.  Hard, wracking sobs that make me just gag.  Tears that burned away my skin like sandpaper, scraping away delicate layers around my eyes, leaving the raw exposed.  Lonely & unsure & lost.  Trying so hard to access her ontology, to know really that once upon a time there was actually this woman in the pictures, and she did know me and she did love me.  So angry at God that death exists and that any of this can possibly be ok.  How does right even begin to prevail in this??  Trying so hard to get to an actual, felt remembrance of her having been alive, of her having been my mom, for her life to seem real.  And even when approaching that place, feeling sickeningly dizzy in my head, disoriented in my body...like all that's real is this loss and it's everywhere in me...and what's real of her just feels illusory in the worst, trickiest way.  This year it was way worse than the one right after she died.  For that one I was numb.  This is much harder.

And better.

Scott Peck says that if it's not paradoxical it may not be true.  My entire life feels paradoxical sometimes.  It's what helps me know I'm real.

So was she.  The battle and the heart's reach help me know it.

When he came home Jonathan folded me in a hug.  "Let's make coffee and you can tell me about her," he said.  It wasn't what got said that mattered.  We had Common Ground last night.  The auditorium was cold but most of the quivering came from inside me.  He put his arm around me and I felt stillness.  Presence matters.

I've been coming back to this for the past month or so as we prepared for last night's program.  It speaks to all kind of things in life.  It's prayer.  The band did it live last night and yes, the tears that fell still stung my skin a little even hours later in the day.  Thank God.  I had skin.  And could feel.  And could welcome the tears.

She's still gone.  And I'm still ok.


©2011 Mindy Danylak