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| My mom and me, January 18, 2019 |
My mom lit up when I joined her for lunch today, saying she was so “delighted” to see me. I responded how I, too, am so delighted to see her.
I looked at the bandaid on my mother’s left check and was reminded of our visit to a doctor earlier in the week where a lesion on her face and on her right leg were biopsied. While we won’t know for sure until the results are back, her doctor believes it likely that she has a form of skin cancer “that you die with and not from.” So many reminders of the preciousness of each moment.
As we sat at the lunch table I asked my mother how she’s doing today. Mom didn’t miss a beat before answering “depressed.” Knowing how for most of her life she wasn’t able to trust anyone, I cannot describe my gratitude for how my mother is able to be honest with me today. Such a gift to us both. I responded by lovingly looking into her eyes and touching her arm, and before I could say anything Mom said, “But I’m good now that you’re here... You’re my sweet darling.” We continued to gaze into each other’s eyes and my mom simply said, “My dearest Molly.” My eyes welled with tears. “I love you so much, too, Mom.”
Nearly 6 years ago when my then 87 year old mother first moved here to live by us in the Pacific Northwest, her psychiatrist on the psychiatric ward where she was hospitalized (following another breakdown) told us that without the appropriate care and medications she needed to treat her severe mental illness that my mother would end up institutionalized. And indeed, nearly 30 years ago I was told by an early therapist that people with my mom’s severe narcissism “go fast in the end — they get sick and die, they take their own lives, or they are institutionalized.” After decades of healing work related to having a mother who demonstrated again and again that she was incapable of giving or receiving love, I never dreamed it remotely possible that my mother was capable of any degree of awakening from the tortured nightmare of her mental illness. I was wrong.
It’s been a perfect storm that brought so much together six years ago, which began with the traumatic ending of her 4th marriage. The suicide attempts that followed and the magnitude of her illness forced her hospitalization. Unlike her treating doctor in Michigan, her doctors here in Vancouver understood the severity of her anxiety and major depression, her entire Cluster B personality disorders (Narcissistic, Borderline, Histrionic, and Antisocial), and her Schizoaffective Disorder. And, yes, Zoloft and especially the antipsychotic Risperidone have made a profound difference, also including taking the place of her daily dependence on alcohol. And yes, the Alzheimer’s caused just enough memory loss to take the edge off memories that would have otherwise been unbearable.
AND there was something deep within my mother that did not die, despite all appearances to the contrary. And this is the Grace-filled mystery and miracle and power of love.
Now for nearly six years my mother has utterly been immersed in love. Because something in me also did not die — and despite the utter brutality of the mother I had before my second mother was born. Through many years of sobriety and healing work and awakening, I recovered my own deep capacity for understanding, compassion, and love — even towards the first mother I’d known for nearly my whole life who caused such incredible trauma to so many.
This second mom, the one in this picture, has been able to remember — and even with the increasing impact of Alzheimer’s — what she had forgotten and lost all those many years ago when she was a tiny vulnerable baby born to a wounded mentally ill mother who could not love. This photograph embodies the truth of the larger picture that any of us can be vulnerable to forgetting — and that is the power of Love.
May we all be inspired to shine the Light of our deepest nature ever more deeply. As we do, Grace comes to increasingly permeate ourselves and this beautiful hurting world we share. 💜🙏
With love and blessings,
Molly
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