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...

layers

layer by layer i step into a new level of grief. it has now been seven months since she left. god i miss her. it is getting worse. the empitiness, the lonliness, the craving to hold her hand, to hear her voice, to go for a walk to smell her skin. i continue to relive her death in my dreams, and in the waking hours throughout the day i remember that she is gone. it is asthough i have these clear moments in time when i truly get the severity of her absence and it is like she just died for the first time.

restless sleep

my mother died five months ago. i had my daughter three weeks later. i am twenty-six years old, and sleep is no longer a restful place. piper wakes me up repeatedly throughout the night to nurse, but more than that it is my dreams.
i woke up this morning with it fresh in my mind... in my dream she is sick and dying, and i am crying, trying to hold on, trying to keep her somehow... it has gotten to the point that i dream the same dream every night, the circumstances and setting is different, but she is always dying, and i am always holding on.
i have been wanting relief from this. it occurred to me today that perhaps writing about it might help me release it. perhaps if i release it into writing it will leave my subconscious. although i am prepared to live the rest of my life re-living her death in my dreams. our connection was so powerful, i guess i didn't expect it to go away quietly.
grief feels like a private thing. something that is hard to convey. something that is a solitary and lonely place. so i write tentatively. yet my mother always told me that secrets keep us sick, as far as growing up in an alcoholic home goes. so i wonder if grief should not be a private thing. maybe it needs to see the light of day so that it can grow into something else. i am always for doing things differently.
i am aware it is easy to hide behind words and computer screens. i feel a sense of privacy as i write this by myself, yet i know others will see it. i want others to see it, yet i dont want to talk about it. i think that part of this process for me is allowing myself to be vulnerable with others, to allow myself to make mistakes and to not have to have it all together. so is it wrong to write it rather that speak it? i dont know...
i know i can handle what i uncover.
if i have learned anything in the last five months it is to trust myself. so for now i will trust, and i will write...