Visiting Motherhood

This is Mom! This is her passport photo from when we were tiny tots. We recently had a remembrance day for her. She passed ten years ago now and of course we miss her. We, me and my family, wanted to do something for her, to honor her beautiful, kind, generous, and most graceful spirit. 

We invited all her lovely friends and ours that had known her well, all together. We reminisced all day about her, sang together, played together whilst eating her favorite foods, listening to her favorite music and having tea with proper cups and saucers: ) as she would have thought to.

Me and my big Sis Joanna, couldn't let the day go and stayed up till all hours singing songs with the night owls. We miss the music so. She had been a singer and what a rich and resonant voice she had. I would hear her late at night when she thought we were all asleep, she would sing and play and lull us all to some perfect place. I would have joined her on the weekends. 

But to drift asleep with the sound of the piano and her efforts to sing softly would be heaven to me now. Like so often in life, it takes loosing something to know how much you love it. But hang on a minute; )Right now, Maddy sleeps softly upstairs, the Guinea pigs still scratch about kept awake by my typing and lamp light, the clock ticks and tocks. The stars shine above me, the earth moves below me, my feet are planted firmly tonight. I am here now, undisturbed in this now. 

I am mother as my mother was mother to me, listening to night breathing and anticipating my early bird by my side. First thing in the morning she will tweet to me about the coming of the day, and something always is. That now feeling, and You let go and you get something in return, an dfind you have lost nothing, Really? Yes, and it always just goes like that. Life following life. And Love coming into it with some feeling of grand spaciousness in your heart when you decide to accept things as they are.

I have moments locked in me of holding my Mother's hand as a child, roughened from Winter work and washing dishes, but warm and perfect to me as in summer with the smell of strawberries from picking in the garden. Perfectly formed memories too and staying always. Those warm sweaters, always in blues or browns, that wrapped me like a cocoon of absolute softness and her voice that always had care in it somewhere. 

I watch Madeleine's hands animated in play, talking to each other often, or clasping a beloved doll or even clasped in mine, so small, so big since I last looked, so perfect. Just right for now. 

In some true way we are all here, I know it. And, on her remembrance day I felt like I gave her something for the first time in ten years. I could give her a song, a cup of tea, a piece of shortbread, as I served her friends and myself, I was serving her, sharing and visiting with her, and her with me. Smiling with her.

 I wonder is there a better way to say this. Ach I don't wonder, I bet there is

 But its just such a kind of feeling thing. To fathom the idea of separation from death seems so much more difficult than to accept that we are all in this together now : ) And That she is sharing my Motherhood is a very nice thought indeed. When I think that thought, a whole lot of real heart seems to awaken. 

Rest in Mother

What else matters now?


you sleeping soundly from your long day of running through the greens of May, June, July


Its just another part you know?


This is my life, and this is another part


Whats this?


Joy?


Were you expecting this?


Whats this?


Love
with a capital L


And Hope, for more love and more joy and space for more, and anything and everything now.


What is this child in my arms?
let me lay down and listen to her breathe. Let me breathe with her.


Nothing else matters now.

                

xx E


Thank you dear reader