KapOWWeee

That's what it was when I started reading Henri Nouwen's book "In Memorium" yesterday. He has put into words the experience I had with my mother while she was in the hospital and for days after her death. He talked about the use of prayer with her. I remembering thinking in the hospital how EVERYONE used prayer. The nurses said they would keep her in their prayers, the social worker, the "pink ladies", the people passing in the hallways that I had become familiar with, the cashier in the cafeteria...they all said the same thing. "I'll keep her in my prayers."

My sisters,dad and I prayed with her, over her, for her. We prayed for ourselves, for the doctors and nurses caring for her. We prayed and prayed and prayed. I was aware that it helped. It brought my attention to that higher place where sense was made of the things that confused me. It helped relieve the despair I felt of losing my mother. And it helped my mom. She would become peaceful while listening or she would smile quietly. There was one chaplain whose southern voice soothed her as he made up his own prayer just for her. He would always say to her, "Oh Gloria, you look beautiful today." I would think at the time, "What a wierd thing to say! She doesn't look great today, She looks awful!!" But then she would smile and I could see that it comforted her and made her feel good.

Reading Nouwen's book, I went back into that very precious time with my mom. When I was "there" in that intense reality, I said to myself, "I will never forget this place. I want to live my life from this place." It hasn't even been 60 days since her death, and I have veered far away from that truthful place. Caught up in the job and routine. Maybe that is why I was so kapowwwed while reading this. I was reminded of my mother's death and that feeling of losing her, of letting her go, and how that process helped me touch the mystery of human life.

"It is precisely in the moments when we are most human, most in touch with what binds us together, that we discover the hidden depths of life." p.10

In those hidden depths of life, I question my day to day activities with a new and hopefully awakened viewpoint. I can't say I've been happy. I can't say that I'm skipping with joy about my life right now. But I can say, that I can get out of bed without a weight pulling me back under the covers. I can think about the upcoming day and feel a little less quicksand under my actions.

I recognize that this is "that" process...of learning who I am without the groundedness of my mother's attention and that saddness and missing her still defines the state of my psyche.

"The deeper I entered into my own grief, the more I became aware that something new was about to be born, something that I had not known before."

It is my job to awaken to what is new and feel as much as I can, the spirit that my mother embodied and that I shared in the hospital room with her. It is my job to remember. To remember the absolute preciousness of life and of being human with all its angst, joy, distractions and that there is a spirit that lives within me - ready to direct my day. I have to remember that I lost my mother in the hospital. That wonderful woman with her smile, laugh, and all those expressions. I lost those to a finality that still baffles and KapOWWWWees me. Now that is a truth to be reckoned with.

"Sometimes I find myself daydreaming about radical changes, new beginnings and great conversations. Yet I know that I must be patient and allow her who taught me so much her by life to teach me even more by her death." p 62
To buy this book, click on this link:
In Memoriam