Love Prevails

The waves ebb and flow. I am mindful of love and loss, of gratitude and grief, of strength and fragility, of tenderness and violence, of vibrant life and of the closeness of death, and of the preciousness and impermanence of each moment... including the hard ones.

As Ron and I drove home from the river tonight, wet and happy doggies in the back, we found ourselves passing by what I had previously only thought of as the local Urgent Care. Now as I looked at this large building that had once been a hospital, I reflected how I never in my wildest dreams would have ever guessed that my mother would be there, just five blocks from our home, staying her second night locked away on the psych ward. Just a week ago today we were filled with hopes and dreams as our plane set down here in the Portland/Vancouver area. A new chapter was beginning. 
 

This is so beyond sad....

Some of us can make it. We can go through horrendous trauma and loss and violence and somehow, through amazing Grace, we find the pathway to embracing, opening, and healing our broken hearts. And we root into a path of awakening. We even discover that there are profound gifts buried right there in the depths of all that darkness. So many paradoxes, so much Mystery....
 

It is also true that some of us cannot make it, that for some of us there is never a recognizable path that reveals itself that could free us from so much suffering. I learned this over the years of being witness to the struggles and torment of my twin brother, who ended his life in 1978 when we were just 26. There were visits to psych wards that happened back then, too, beginning just before John's first suicide attempt in 1971, and continuing on until only months before my brother's death. John never discovered the doorway through...
 

The week before last was such a triumph. We won in court! I was now legal guardian of my mother and my mom was finally free to leave Michigan and move to the Northwest to spend the rest of her life living near her family. We had worked so hard and waited so long for this! There was so much celebration, so many smiles, so much talk of love and making up for lost time and starting anew. Of course, I was also aware that, despite the treasure of such precious moments, the next chapter would not be an easy one. There was also no way to know just what would unfold.

The saddest thing of all is to be witness to someone who is starving, utterly starving to death for love, and yet is compelled to look right past the beautiful and open hearts that are right there, present, available, and shove away the life-saving nourishment that is being offered. 
 

My son Brian's lovely Marita spoke this morning, after we all had visited Mom/Grandma Nan at the hospital, of "reactive attachment." And a light-bulb went on, a big ah-ha! moment. Many of us can form healthy attachments with other human beings. Some, like me, also need to spend years getting help and learning how in the heck to open our hearts to give and receive love. So many learn early on to build walls rather than to trust and open, deepen, and expand our hearts. Our attachments are "reactive" - one moment, day, mood we are so certain that we love someone and they love us. Then the next that love we were so sure of seems like an illusion. We react. We haven't yet learned to trust, discern, heal our injured instincts, open our hearts very wide, or form a secure and healthy attachment with another human being.
 

Time passes. As we age, the consequences of the choices we make, consciously or otherwise, manifest with greater and greater strength. What we carry inside of ourselves comes knocking with increasing urgency, showing up as all kinds of traumas, losses, betrayals, illnesses, deadends; or emerging more and more as joy, beauty, gratitude, courage, clarity, passion and compassion. The world is either becoming more desperate or more amazing. We are either on a path in which we are expanding or contracting, growing in love or fear, feeding our resentments or opening increasingly to the truth of our intimate connection with all beings, with all of life. Are we loving well? Are we becoming who we truly are? Are we on our path or walking beside it? Are we on a journey of awakening, or are we stuck in the distortions of separation, resentment, judgment, fear, and other manifestations of our unhealed life experiences and unattended hearts? It is such a paradox that our wounds ultimately either propel us into an unrelenting Twilight Zone of terror and loss, or our wounds wake us up.

And if we are blessed with this amazing experience of gradual awakening, we increasingly discover the exquisite gifts of balance, beauty, joy, laughter, meaning, purpose, connection, compassion, caring, kindness, courage. And Love.
 

This evening, while on our second visit of the day, I held my mother. I held her in a way that she was not capable of holding me, even when I was a child -- tenderly, compassionately, sweetly. And she weeps. I tell my mother softly, again and again whispering in her ear, "I love you, Mom." And all she can say, in-between waves of a lifetime's worth of unresolved grief and loss is, "If you love me, I feel sorry for you." 
 

And even if my mom can no longer say that she loves me or her family, I can love her. We can love her. Whether or not my mother can ever receive our love, it is there. Always and forevermore, and even when we lose touch with this higher truth, it is Love that prevails.

May we all grow in compassion. May we be healed. May our hearts open. May we know the beauty of our true nature, and thus awaken to the beauty of all beings. May we know Love.

Namaste ~ Molly
 

"The more we love, the more real we become."

~ Stephen Levine