Grief

Some grief is explosive. Most isn't. The grief which results from a traumatic, unexpected loss can be devastating, exaggerated by shock. The grief over a more predictable loss is simply a deepening of the sadness over our shared human condition.

As I gradually dismantle the physical details of my mother's life, I grieve. I get frustrated by the clutter of her life, filling garbage bag after garbage bag. I also ponder more seriously than ever on the circumstances of a life which produced this relentless fear of deprivation. I reach across time and space to the little girl who suffered so miserably from poverty and cultural dissonance. I feel deep sadness for her, but realize how helpless I have always been to heal her damage. Now I am simply cleaning up the aftermath.

Last year I spoke on the telephone with a psychic, recommended to me by a friend in Canada. At one point she said, "I want to encourage you to realize that your life is separate from your mother's. This will become an important thing for your to realize soon." At the time, I shrugged and thought: Big news. My mother and I were far from chums.

Now I understand this concept of separation more than ever. The separation I experience is purely human, since I am concretely composed in part of my mother's DNA. I see physical habits and gestures in myself that are the same as my mother's. These are unconscious, until noticed. Once noticed and analyzed, in a way that humans can do, I have the choice to modify them or simply accept these behaviors. In modifying them, I create a separate identity.

Boxing my mother's collected tokens of security, I put to rest some of my own questions about our 61-year relationship. I stand there alive and consciously a very different person in her loud absence within the walls of her house. The small child I once was has slowly disappeared from those rooms over the years. Even the memories of him are almost gone by choice. With the lightness of being is the shadow of loss, intertwined and inseparable. This strikes me as essential to the mindful human condition.