Sara's Virtual Notebook

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This post is part of a weekly series prompted by the new Next Chapter Book Club featuring the Happy Book. Each Friday Jamie will be asking us what makes us happy, and anyone can participate!
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Death might seem a peculiar subject for a Happy Friday post, but the event expressed here is the event which divides my life into Before and After. I am a different person than I was before, changed in many deeply positive ways. I think it is that change that makes it possible for me to experience happiness in the now.

Six years ago today, on an altogether different Friday morning, I received word that my mother had passed away.  My family and I were all aware that she was nearing the end, yet in our denial had hoped we could each get through our Fridays and gather later to be with her. So while it was not a surprise, it was a shock.  It was a door that closed that would never re-open, and no amount of knowing beforehand changes the finality of that door slam. And then I was surprised by the immediate softening, as I sat there holding the phone in my hands, and looking around a busy graphics department on deadline day. Suddenly knowing the pain I had convinced myself I had already felt and grieved, and knowing it to be new. It was the realization that I was living still, breathing and speaking in a world in which my mother was no more. A strange grace followed that moment within minutes. I went from total shock to relief to feeling blessed by my mother.  I felt her sudden return to wholeness. I felt held and lifted out of any regrets I had toward the times when I did not handle my mother or her illness well. Although the grace of that early peace has faded, the gifts of that grace were a complete and total healing of my relationship with my mother.  I knew in those moments that she now had access  to the bigger picture, and as such she knew where I was coming from when I made mistakes. There was forgiveness.  I also felt that her awareness of her own earthly fallibility, and that I am not expected to hold her up as a saint, which is something we often do when our loved ones pass on.

For much of my life, I carried a discouraging voice in my head whenever I attempted anything new. It was my mother’s voice. When she became ill, she lost her voice first. Within two years of the onset of her illness, the internal critical voice of my mother in my head faded. In fact, I had a hard time recalling her voice at all.  I can now recall it readily — but it is not the critical voice I hear. The mother I relate to now is one who only ever wanted what was best for me, who loved me in all my oddness, even though in life she did not always understand the various parts of me.

When I lost my mother that Friday, I became a member of a club that we all belong to at some point in our lives. It is not possible to go through life without experiencing loss. I thought I had understood grief and loss in others, but I never really did until I experienced it myself. It deepened my compassion toward the shared experience of grief.  In fact, I found myself surrounded by young motherless women who supported me and knew that it is not the words you say to someone that is grieving, it is that you took the time to speak them at all.

It’s cliche, but when someone you love dies, you realize life is short. I began to ask myself what I wanted to do with that limited time, but  realized I was unclear what I wanted to do. Yet what became very clear was what I didn’t want to do:  just about everything I was doing at that point. Within 9 months, I left a toxic office environment and began taking better care of my body and my health. I made many changes for the better which might not have happened without that experience of loss.

One more thing: the experience of grace following my mother’s death reinforced my belief that our souls are eternal. And what’s more, I learned that in our temporal world, there does exist one eternal thing: love. For many, death and grief are a test of faith. For me, it reinforced my faith which became stronger than ever. Although I would not have chosen to lose my mother, I am ever grateful for the gifts of healing, compassion and love that her loss made possible. These are things only made known to me by living in a world in which the only breath my mother breathes is now my own.