MOTHER knows Best or “Don’t even try to tell your mom what you think she should do!”
My mother is dead and has been for some time. She died in 2009 the day before her President for life Obama after FDR was scheduled for his Inauguration. I begged her to stay with me and not travel back “home”. My needs and plans for her certainly superseded whatever she had to do. She reassured me she would return and be back and certainly in time for my birthday just weeks away.
My last sighting of her on this earthly plane was seeing her chatting up the porter at the Long Beach Airport. She already had her folded $20 bill folder in her hand for his tip. I kissed her one more time and tried saying goodbye but she as was already well engaged with quizzing the young man about his life goals and plans. He was her new child now, carrying her belongings past security, baggage scanners to all my Veterans with their new jobs in TSA to the place where you sit and wait to be called to board the plane. It was Moving Day for me and I didn’t even know it.
God protected Daniel in the lion’s den and the three boys in the fiery furnace. They didn’t get eaten or burned, so biblically speaking we know protection can happen. What we don’t know is “the when” or “the how” or all the details that my dear friend says are beyond our pay grade.
Intuitively I did not know my mother would die or that I would feel such a sense of urgency that she not leave me that January day. Today I do know that my mother did not leave me and has never ever left me alone and that whatever I thought she should do; that I was her child and not her mother or her God and that I would not ever be in charge of her itinerary.
It was not about love, or her listening to good advice, it was all about how we must mind our purpose and do what we are called to do. What we are called to do and what others have in mind for us to do at times may be two very different things.
There have been so many COVID21 related truths as in plural albeit sweet moments of grief and loss. I still love the blessed assurance that I always know what’s best. I am prone to be so damn smart! I love the intellectual snobbery as to what I think I know for sure. So easy for me to become smug without a ounce of humility. What comfort there is in just being right!
I am sure that I know what’s best and the world would be a better place if only…. (fill in the blank here) and just listen to me or just trust me. Be it masks, or vaccines, or Vitamins, or folks you should associate with on the good buddy approved list . Read the books I send you. I alone know the strength of your resilient immune system. We all have our opinions and what masks for the actions we take for the common good; I worry more about my own fragile body most days and not yours.
Being separated from one’s Mother is in fact to leave the womb, the place we attached to so seamlessly at our very foundation. Just so… we are poised to be nourished, to breathe, to be kept at just the right temperature until just the right moment. The birth story which we think begins with us is indeed a story about our Mother and how we grow together and then separate. Wrenching as it were; it must be done.
Were we told, about how we might die, could we choose from the menu? If she was told that so the story goes that you who would not be here without her … that you were also the potential cause of her death, what a burden for a little one to keep.
Rewriting that story, taking a re-birthing cleansing breath and how we come to understand the tale can free us and heal us. When we allow our mothers to take their leave so are we transformed and that chapter of our story ends. Take a breath… https://www.healthline.com/health/rebirthing#takeaway
My partner cleans not for a living, it is her life-line, pastoral care for keeping order in the world when all else is out of control. She is very well paid for this extraordinary skill and in receipt of much well-earned gratitude when she is able when no one else can make clean come.
Make the storehouse orderly and calm from what seems to some as overwhelming chaos. She is detached so she can create a space; cleanse the energy-field; see the order and “put it up” or away or just out of sight to give the eye a moment of pause after taking much too much in. Can you see or hear what still has the power to bring you Joy?
We all have our default coping strategies: eating; drinking; praying; smoking; working; Fortnite; our so-called addictions of all sorts. Cleaning is hers and while laboring with a lot of stress these days; she has been cleaning a lot these days. Her project for the cool days of fall is a blessing and a not so gentle reminder of the humility we are asked to provide when impatiently dealing with our Mother.
Agreements or not, our Mother asks only for our acceptance, help and compassion even when we do not support her choice. Pacts made solemnly in the womb for the day that would come like this. This mother had indeed planned to return home. It never crossed her mind that choices made might indeed prevent her return.
Her local church, her sanctuary the storehouse was brimming full with all you might ever need. All the love that had sustained you in the womb would indeed sustain you for many lifetimes. It is what most mothers want to do. Leaving behind an inheritance of love that she hopes you will find in memories and keepsakes and treasures that only she and you would know their meaning. She left all her things behind except you.
It is a matter of respect as it were. Mother don’t leave me unless/until I leave you. Leave quietly and let me go about my father’s business! Listen to me, I know what’s best for you. A mother died leaving behind a young teen son. So safe to say had she worn a mask or taken her vaccine, not traveled or taken that plane or car ride, that job or disobeyed or behave as all wayward women do. A choice made to gather and see something sorely missed. Travel by boat without a life jacket; clearly a mother who had made all the right choices for herself to this point. What was one more task; all risks taken aside, she never thought the consequences might be so dire.
A distant relation who writes daily about all manner of things was most poignant today about the angst of placing his dear Mother in a nursing home this week. She left him after he had taken the pains to move home! Another Mother taking her leave. Such wonder and amazement and awe fill our thoughts when we are not angry that they weren’t smart enough to listen. Who was it exactly that taught me the joy of living and taking my leave to give me life.
References:
Psalm 51. Humility SONG
Idaho is coping…at its best just like New York
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/09/25/idaho-funeral-homes-coronavirus/
I don’t know what you’ve come to do!
