Remembering My Mom

Nearly year round, and right up until just weeks before my 94 year old mother's death on June 20th, my mama and I would go out into the garden area of her assisted living. In the cooler weather, I'd bundle her up, wrap her in the prayer blanket made for her by a loving friend's church group in California (during the time of the legal battle in 2013 to bring her home to her family). And I can just hear my mom protest, "I don't need a blanket!" I'd respond, "Yes you do," and wrap it tight, help her with her sunglasses, and down the hallway we'd go and out into the sunshine and gentle breezes and peace and tranquility of nature and tall trees and chirping birds. 

Often we'd just sit there holding hands in silence. I clearly remember soaking in these moments with my mama. I'd feel the life-force pulsing through her body, the warmth of her hands, the sounds of her breathing — all while knowing this is impermanent. With the awareness of death sitting over our shoulders, I was mindful that there would come a time when there would be no more garden moments with my mom, no more holding hands, no more whispering in her ear "I love you," no more soaking in the sweetness of the outdoors and each other.

I was deeply conscious of the preciousness of our time together. And also how we were both healing from the years of when it was not possible for us to be connected heart-to-heart, soul-to-soul.

* * * * *

There were years before the garden area of Glenwood Place became our go-to place when our options were much wider. In the beginning when my mother first came to live near our Vancouver, Washington home in 2013, she was much more mobile. For several years I could handle the transfers in and out of our car and on and off the toilet by myself. As my mama's mobility gradually decreased, outings were still doable with Ron and me teaming up to do the transfers. Those were the times of weekly Sunday dinners at our home, countless experiences of sitting out in the sanctuary of our patio, frequent meals dining out together, gatherings with family and dear friends, and numerous trips to places near and far.

We are on the patio with grandson Kevin and his lovely Arlyne.

Grandson Matt joins us for one of our countless meals out.

At our favorite county park along the Columbia River and just minutes from our home.

Three generations on the beaches of the Pacific Ocean.

Grandson Brian's birthday is just 4 days before his grandmother's. It was a joy to celebrate together.

We enjoyed gatherings with 4 generations of family and dear friends.

There were countless meals we enjoyed out on our patio.

My mother relished connecting with all family, including her first cousin Bob Dean who lives outside Portland.

So many treasured memories now flood my consciousness and my heart. And at the core of all that we shared over the seven years that my mom lived here near her family is love. Again and again and again, what permeated each experience was love.

* * * * *

From the beginning when my mother first moved here in May of 2013 and over the years that would follow, I was witness to a death, a rebirth, and then her final physical death two weeks ago.

While I had wanted to believe that she'd experienced at least some degree of successful treatment for her mental illness during the time that she had remained in Michigan following her breakdown and suicide attempt in January 2013, it became obvious after we were finally able to bring my mother home to us that she had not. The terror and trauma, hatred and self-loathing, and overwhelming compulsion to close her heart and flee — all of which had fed her illness for decades — were once again triggered and on full tragic display.

My mom was now once again in all-out battle with herself, which she mistakenly believed was a battle with me. And thus is the tragedy of anyone suffering from severe narcissism and other illnesses — the belief that the root of deep distress and pain is outside of oneself. These projections act as the exact opposite of what is needed and serve to erect and fortify what are often impenetrable walls around ones heart.

As I write this, I am having to stop and weep.
 

I grieve for the decades when my mama was simply incapable of allowing herself to receive, and to give, love. She was starving to death for love and at the same time compelled to push away this saving grace. Allowing love into her heart meant that her endless running, her compulsion to project and dehumanize, her addictions to image management and alcohol and more, and all the unhealthy but familiar coping strategies, belief systems, and defenses against the vulnerability that love requires would need to be healed and ultimately allowed to gradually fall away and die. 
 

My mom had fought against this spiritual death and rebirth for her entire adult life. She had often mistakenly believed that her physical body needed to die — rather than the root causes of her suffering — and for decades threatened suicide, beginning just a month after my twin brother had ended his life in 1978. At that time, my mother was furious with me because I had sent flowers to her parents for their birthdays, which fell just days apart, and this was an unforgivable act. Anyone who loved her parents must hate her. And so my tormented mother's thinking went.

And so for nearly all of her life, my mother struck back at what her illness told her were the cause of her pain and suffering — her children, her parents, her husbands, the children of the three husbands which followed the death of my dad, liberals and democrats, builders of her many homes, neighbors, doctors, literally anyone who didn't validate her reality, and the list goes on and on. For my hurting mama, no one was safe from her projections and attacks. Such was the endless torment that she lived with and was compelled to project outward onto others. 

* * * * *

At the conclusion of a nearly year long legal battle to bring my mother here from Michigan and home to her family, which spanned nearly the entirety of 2013, my mom had already begun to root into her heart path. Some memory loss combined with antipsychotic and antidepressant medications and, most critically, the immersion in the love of family were all acting together to nourish the extraordinary miracle of her partial awakening.

She had only been back for a short time in the winter of 2014 when my mother asked me yet again, "Why didn't we see each other for 14 years?" (prior to her breakdown in January 2013). I had avoided answering, still fearful that any answer I might give could trigger for my mom a relapse into some poisonous thinking and projections. So I had diverted and distracted her attention from her question. Until now. We were seated in her apartment at Glenwood. Ron sat next to me and Mom and my son Matt sat across from us. I felt supported and that it was time to give my mother an answer. I kept it very short and simple.

"Well, Mom, you were pretty angry and critical of me. You didn't like my hair or my clothes or my politics." 
 

Silence.....

Then my mother looked right at me and said, "There must have been something in me that I was taking out on you."

My eyes welled with tears. I was shocked and my heart just blown wide open. I looked into Ron's eyes and said, "Did you hear that?!?"

This was not supposed to be possible. But here it was, the impossible becoming possible and happening right before my very eyes and permeating my heart....

Another time in those early weeks after the Michigan court finally awarded me full guardianship of my mother, she and I were in her Glenwood apartment when Mom looked at me with horror. Out of the blue, she asked if I had a good attorney. When I asked why, my mother responded with two words: "My will."

In those moments she knew what she had done. And she was horrified. She desperately wanted to make it right. Because my three sons and I needed to sign a settlement agreement forgoing any further actions to change the will written in November 2012, leaving so much to someone outside of our family, there was nothing further to be done. I was very aware that part of what my sons and I signed on the dotted line for was agreeing that the will my mother wrote in April of 2013, disinheriting the family who had long been in pursuit of financial benefit from their relationship with my mother, was void because she was then declared to be "incompetent." So many sad ironies. And I knew that there was nothing to be done to change this. So I reassured my mama that we got her here with us and that she was worth more than all the money in the world.

Which is the deepest truth.

* * * * *

Yesterday Ron and I went to my mother's apartment at Glenwood Place for what is likely be the last time. We sat on her couch and loveseat and talked. And I wept and wept. So many memories. 
 

And I looked around at all of the furniture, paintings, wedding gifts to my parents, and more that were the only things left now in my mom's apartment. These are the things, also combined with all of my mother's jewelry, that will go to this other family. This was the price we paid, along with enormous attorney bills and a large financial sum, to get my mama free from the clutches of this other family who fought so very hard to ever keep Mom from ever coming home to us. They fiercely fought to keep my mama from me and from all the extraordinary blessings we've shared over the past seven years. It is also true that not once did they visit my mother in the years that followed being my being awarded permanent guardianship.

Why? There can be no mistake about that answer.

But we got my mama. Priceless. And as I looked around at all the things which I will never see again, I wept. And I also felt a profound sense of gratitude.
 

Growing up in the wealthy Detroit suburb of Grosse Pointe Michigan, I know what it is like to live with material wealth but be spiritually impoverished. My childhood family did not know the love that my mom and I have shared over these past years. We were all starving, utterly starving for love. And now all of that has changed.

When I first embarked on my journey of healing, sobriety, awakening, and profound transformation in 1983, I had no idea what lay ahead. I was told in the early years that we do this healing work, not just for ourselves, but also for all the generations that have come before us and all that will follow. One thing that I never thought possible in my wildest dreams was that my mother, my once sometimes charming but often brutal mother, could ever be part of this great healing within our shared lifetimes.

But I was wrong.

And so I continue this deep grieving today, and for who knows how long, for my two mothers — the one who could not love and the one who woke up and opened her heart to love. There is nothing more powerful than Love. And the consciousness of this fills my heart with gratitude.

Grief and gratitude are so intimately woven together...

Someday I will write a book. I will write then, as I do now, because our story is so much greater than just my mama and me and our family. And these ripples of healing, grace, and love are not meant to be kept to ourselves. They are meant to be shared.

I'm moved to close with a wise and powerful teaching from Stephen Levine that I hope we all may be blessed with remembering: "The more we love, the more real we become."

With heartfelt blessings to us all,
♥

Molly

 

My mother in her lovely apartment at Glenwood Place.