Last month, my mother lay down with Death. And like a young woman having known love for the first time, she will never be the same. And neither will I.
Poetry and art-making are my means to chaperoning her through this lingering relationship. As in January’s article, I create word lists from dream images and observe them like tea leaves to see what meaning arises.
The deathbed awaits my mother
yet the expected transformation
is mine.
The grandmothers hold my pain
as it transcends from shock
to relief,
moving round the cycle
of labor
to birth.
My grandfather places
crocodile teeth
on the green clock
circle of life.
Immersed in time,
I’m not surprised when
it comes to a
soft
gentle
Stop.
Beginnings... Endings... They speak to me in identical voices. My mother teaches me how to live between worlds, as moments arrive one at a time for her contemplation and surrender.
Picking up a paintbrush, I continue my search for some place of solidity from which to hold my vigil. The part of me that will always be my mother’s child grieves because she no longer sees me. I blend in with the other caretakers who know her by room number. Yet I’m reassured through blues and lavenders that hers is a world where Spirit offers something much more lasting. Light shines on the crown of her head and seeps downward so that her human aspects become more and more shadowy.
The clock of life bites with the precision of crocodile teeth, yet loss readily yields to gain. I’m no longer sure what to pray for.
I am the chaperone in the back seat, as my mother embraces her own eternity. This is her final lesson to me in this lifetime: to simply allow.
