one year

i feel that i have less and less to say. she died a year ago, yesterday. we had a sweet walk on the canal, and we spread the rest of her ashes. it was a beautiful day, and i felt her everywhere.

The Name of a Fish, by Faith Shearin

If winter is a house then summer is a window
in the bedroom of that house. Sorrow is a river
behind the house and happiness is the name

of a fish who swims downstream. The unborn child
who plays the fragrant garden is named Mavis:
her red hair is made of future and her sleek feet

are wet with dreams. The cat who naps
in the bedroom has his paws in the sun of summer
and his tail in the moonlight of change. You and I

spend years walking up and down the dusty stairs
of the house. Sometimes we stand in the bedroom
and the cat walks towards us like a message.

Sometimes we pick dandelions from the garden
and watch the white heads blow open
in our hands. We are learning to fish in the river

of sorrow; we are undressing for a swim.

the day we laid in the backyard on blankets

i keep going back to the days immediately following my moms death and funeral. i talked to my friend joe the other night, really he is my second brother. he has been there since the beginning. and he was like a son to my mom. he flew in from colorado when she died, as did a few other close friends. i have a few memories from that time.
her funeral was april 15th.
i remember joe talking at the funeral. i remember his pin-stripe suit. i remember feeling that he spoke to who she truly was.
i remember being enormously pregnant, standing in the middle of a circle of people trying to get to me to express their condolences. and as i stood there i felt that i was there to comfort them. that i was the strong one. that i represented my mom, and that she was holding me up. i was in a state of shock and disbelief.
and in some way when i walked into that room that day and saw a set up for a funeral, with an enlarged picture of my mom at the head of rows of chairs, it was as though i had already seen it, and in another way it was as though i was living someone else life. how does one explain this paradox? this paradox that is my life all of the time now, that has me feeling like i am living in a dream.
i remember walking into the building, holding steven's hand. dakota was there. of course. there were so many people there. i was so shut down. i believe it was that day that my emotional body went to sleep, in an effort to rally for the ensuing birth of my daughter.
but what stands out to me most is the day we all laid in the backyard on blankets. and it was like we had stepped back in time. time was suspended mid-air. my mom was just out of town, and we had all woken up late from the raging party we had thrown the night before. ta, joseph, laura, hannah, ryan, sara, and steven... we laid barefoot in the sun and soaked it up, like you do on a spring day when you have been long craving its warmth. and i could almost convince myself that she would be home any minute. and i knew that every one there would truly miss her deeply.
she was their dear friend too. she was their mother. she was the mother we all wished we had.
and i did have her. she was mine. i had her in the way that only children have their mothers. in the way that piper will always have me.
i had her, and she was the best. the greatest. and everyone that knows her knows that this is no exaggeration.
and when she was dying i felt that it was the cruelest thing that could happen on the planet, for me to have had her, my soul mate, the best mother on the planet, only to have her taken away from me. and what i feel today, as i sit here with the deepest sadness, is that i was the lucky one. the luckiest one. i am grateful to have ever known her.
and what i would give to go back to that day. to lay on that blanket with my best friends, bare-foot, basking in the sun, knowing that she was just out of town, that she would be back any minute, and that she would make us dinner,
and we would kiss her face.

our hearts

when we choose to have children we unknowingly make the decision to rip our hearts out of our chests. And then those little hearts go walking around in the world, on their own, vulnerable to all of the elements of our big universe. Even before they walk, before they start to make decisions for themselves, they can still die. By having children we become vulnerable to the deepest grief possible, loosing them.
a week ago my friend lost her heart. she had him for one year. he grew inside of her for almost nine months, came into the world a little early, and four months later, in one fleeting moment was gone.
i was forever changed the moment my mother died.
my world stopped for one moment, and my entire being was changed.
changed forever.
grief does not go away.
it becomes a part of us. it is an integral part of me that functions and breathes right next to the joy and the gratitude and the excitement about the future. it has a life of its own, and i don't seem to have very much say in how it functions. it comes up to the surface and subsides as it needs to.
like an undertow i am pulled under with its force, brought back up for air, only to be pulled under again.
and somehow my life is still full and so rich and saturated with joy and gratitude.
i am absolutely and continually astonished at what we are capable of living with.
we learn to live without.

silence

this weekend has left me with little to say. my dear friends lost their four month old baby boy. i cannot stop thinking about them. they fill my entire being. the pit of my stomach aches for them. the world stands on my chest. i have felt the depths of grief, and yet i know that what they feel today, i have not felt.

the vastness

i am aware that there is less writing from my darker moments. i started this writing in an effort to alleviate some of the grief i was experiencing, unsure of why i was making it public, yet followed my intuition. as i sit here i can remember many of those moments. there has been a big shift in the last few months, but there is a deep sadness that i believe will never leave me. i believe the same of the joy. just because i cannot see it all of the time doesn't mean it is not there.
in any given moment i can get in touch with either emotion. and sometimes i am swept away by them. and frequently i am afraid that i will be left out at sea to die. this really only applies to the sadness. i am not afraid of being overcome by joy.
just yesterday i sensed the the vastness of my moms absence coming in, and immediately the anxiety came barreling in. It is not always this way. It comes and goes in and out of consciousness throughout each day.
But sometimes i feel the hugeness of it all. the reality that she is gone. the vastness. the depth. in a moment i have a glimpse and it is shocking. so many times it feels like experiencing it for the first time.

dream

i just woke up from a dream. i was in pipers room, standing in front of her crib casually talking to my grandmother. and then i realized that i was talking to my grandmother and i grabbed her and held her tight. i was so happy to be with her. my mom was there too, but i could not see her. and i remember thinking that it made sense that i could see granny and not my mom. as i recall it it feels very real. i could feel my grandmothers body structure, her shoulder blades, as they really felt in life. i have not dreamed of her much since she died.
it has been a remarkable year. i was pregnant by august. my grandmother died in september. my mom died in april. i had piper in may. my family was a matriarchy. i became the top of the line overnight. a single exchange. my mother left and in came my daughter.

the joy i can contain

i am the eternal optimist. i remember when my mom was dying, i thought that her death would be the death of this part of me. i thought that all of my beliefs would dissipate and i would be left with only grief and anger. i, of course, could not see the other side of it. i could not imagine how much i would love piper, how much i would know my mom to still be here, and how much love and joy i would find in others and the world around me.
i am taken back by this. it seems to me that our core values remain unshaken through the tests of time so to speak. i do not believe that i am being tested however, rather, i am at choice. i am living out soul contracts and choosing. had i been someone that looked for the bad, the reasons that things dont work out, that is what i would have found.
i have believed and retracted many things in my life, but one that continues to hold is that we find what we seek. when i believe something i go out into the world looking for the evidence to prove that it is true. mostly i am looking for why everything is in its right place, that there is a reason for all of it, and that in the end it will always work out.
loosing my mom was my greatest fear. it happened. i lost her.
only to discover that i cannot loose her. only to be more convicted about what i believe.
this is not to say that i am not deeply sad and angry. i am. yet, i have found that there is room for both, the sadness and the joy. the grief is a part of me now. it feels that it will be there forever, an integral part of my being. within twenty one days i experienced the greatest sadness and the greatest joy of my life- the death of my mother and the birth of my daughter.
i have choosen a deep level of responsibility in this life, and there are times when i want nothing else but to not care. to just have fun, to be care free. i look at others who seem to live this way with great envy.
and then i remember piper. steven. my mom. art. friends. all that makes up my life, all that i am grateful for, and that i wouldn't trade for anything. and then i also remember that the grass is always greener. and in just twenty six years i have experienced so much life, so much richness.
"The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain."
The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran.

her letter

the day after my mother died i was looking for pictures of her. for whatever reason i opened her jewelry box and i found an envelope addressed to herself. i decided to open it, thinking i would find a letter she had written to herself. instead i found a letter written to me.
i sat on her bed, where i had laid with her as she died less than 24 hours prior, tears streaming down my face as i read the most beautiful letter. she wrote in 1998. when i think back to our life then i cannot find a reason for her to write this letter. but i know my mom, and i am sure she just felt inspired, so she sat down to write. when i read it i have to believe that she knew she would leave life early. she knew i would need this letter.
when i miss her most i think of the last paragraph.

"There is so much more I could say, but it would never approximate the love and gratitude I have for you choosing me to be your mother. I have given you what I have known to give. There is so much more I would have liked to give you. If you are reading this I may be gone. I would not have wanted to leave without some attempt at expressing my love for you. You have been a treasure to me. It is you who have made my life meaningful. I know you will self-actualize, as you are every moment. You will carry my love with you, knowing that when I leave it is time, it is meant to be. My job is complete here. But always remember that I will be with you and find joy and peace in that. Let every sunset, every rainbow, every moon lit night, every blooming flower, every singing bird remind you of my love, not to sadden but to fill you with a sense of love. Know that I am at peace, in a glorious place awaiting our reunion."

creative process

today i signed up for a ceramics class. it has been two years since i really had my hands in clay, since i really made art. right before my mom's hysterectomy i developed an anxiety that i could not shake. i was uninspired. i couldn't get a grasp on what was next. i started looking into grad school, and came to the reality that i just wasn't ready, maybe never would be.
i would start to feel anxious, and i would walk out my door and just keep walking until it subsided. i talked to my mom about it, as i talked to her about everything.
what i know now is that i knew what was to come. on some level i knew from the very beginning. as a child i was undeniably and uncontrollably attached to my mom. i would cry when she would leave. i slept in her bed until i was twelve. i spent every moment possible with her. i had and inexplicable fear of loosing her.
when she was dying, she recalled that when i was young i used to tell her that if she died i did not want to live. i remember this.
i remember laying in bed counting the years that i had left with her if she died at different ages.
when i went to college she gave me a ring, on the inside, it said "beyond time and space". she explained that our love was beyond time and space, we were not limited to physical vicinity. in later years i had it tattooed to my foot, and to my suprise my mom followed suit and had it tattooed on her foot as well.
when she was dying, i laid in bed with her and repeatedly said, "forever, right? no matter what, beyond time and space forever?" she always said "yes, forever". i cried uncontrollably for that entire month.
many people i believe chalked up our relationship to an unhealthy response to my father being absent. i played the husband for her, and she fullfilled my fear of abandonment. i need to say that i do believe my mom being single was a factor in our relationship, but only in a positive way. she had more time for me, and when she was dying she said that she was grateful because no one got in the way.
ultimately, i know that people can only see things through their filter and that my relationship with my mom was rare. i feel that very few have felt that type of connection, and even less people have felt it with their mother. my mom and i did not talk to many people about it. it was and is still hard to explain.
in some way now that she is gone, in the body sense of the word, i feel it even stronger. i guess the very fact that i cannot touch her, hear her voice, or hold her hand, and yet i still feel so strongly bonded to her makes it more real.

yesterday, i heard her voice in everything that i did. i watched an inspirational video that felt like her words. then i talked to a woman that spoke of things that my mom stood for. much of the inspiration of my life came from my mom. yesterday it found me. perhaps she directed it my way...

this time last year

this time last year i spent the weekend with my mom, brother and husband in a cabin in brown county. it was her birthday weekend. it was a great weekend. i cant think of a way i would rather spend my time. we talked about the years to come and how we would make it a tradition. we talked about how piper would be old enough to swim in the water park this year. i had no idea that only two months later i would get a call at work from my brother that she was in the hospital with a collapsed lung.
i walked home that day hysterical. on some level i knew. i tried to talk myself out of it, but i walked those ten blocks home with tears streaming down my face. when i recall this it feels like a dream. my life before my moms death feels surreal. in so many ways she is the most integral part of my being, yet when i think of my life with her it as though i made it up. all that is real is the last eight months. and the three weeks en-between her death and pipers birth i have absolutely no recollection. some say these are post-traumatic symptoms.
today i would pay someone to knock me out. i fantasize about a carefree life, like the one i had before this transition of death and birth.
i can only imagine what will ensue from all of this. i know that i will grow immeasurably from this and i sense that great things will come of it. but at this moment i would like a heavy dose of narcotics followed by a long vacation in a tropical place that involves endless amounts sleeping, eating and drinking...