Not just any Friday morning

Dragon Mood? -- breathing and remembering

This is Good Friday morning. And twelve years ago -- can it really be twelve years already? -- my mother died, in her car, coming home from walking in the mall, on a Good Friday morning.

I was home that day, as I am today, hanging wallpaper in my kitchen in the Lexington house.

I don't want to recall all the details, all the ambiguity and confusion and then, shock. But I do want to remember.

And that is part of the reason for my posting this post -- remembering my mom.

It is tricky remembering the dead, recalling someone you loved. It is so easy, so very easy to gloss over the wholeness of her being, remembering only the parts that I want to remember or need to remember.

My mom and I did not have an easy relationship. With the help of S, I had put energy into re-approaching my mother -- the wonderful French word, rapprochement, comes to mind -- because I wanted to like her more. I can recall a handful of things that I did in the last year or two of her life that I now hold like pebbles in my hand, smooth and soothing, to draw myself nearer to her. They are sweet, small, relatively insignificant actions or events that happened between my mom and me -- and they do provide some comfort when I miss her deep down.

I'm remembering you today, Mom. I'm remembering your eyes and your hair, the way your mouth moved when you laughed. I'm remembering the funny way you had of buttoning your winter coat. I'm remembering the delight I saw or heard whenever you anticipated being with your grandkids. I'm remembering the tiredness and sadness in your eyes that was usually explained away -- and usually without recriminations. I'm remembering your hugs and how their brief intensity never expressed fully all the big feelings I imagined stood behind them. I'm remembering all the "shoulds" that you seemed to embody -- and finally, how that physical body said, "Enough!"

What I have a hard time remembering, specifically and concretely, is your incredible nurturing, tenderness and compassion for others. I don't know why I have such trouble with those memories. Those qualities, those values, feel as much a part of you as your every breath. I can't tease those apart from how I saw you or now see you.

I don't know if that's a good thing, a real thing or just an illusion of my memory of you.

I do miss you, Mom . . . even now, after twelve years . . . a blink in the timeless stream of being. Are you a leaf on that stream? Floating, drifting here and there? Are you mindful and intentional in that stream?

I don't know. I don't have any clue. But, I do know that I miss you and I'm remembering you.