Easter Passes and Random Thoughts Visit

My first Easter without Mom came and went. I went out of town as planned but seeing those plans through was just not meant to be. I spent Easter feeling like a cartoon character - driving back, crying my way home and then sitting in the darkness of the drawn shades, telling no one where I was or why. I just wanted to savor the aloneness, the sadness, the emptiness without having to explain my feelings to anyone, without someone "trying to cheer me up," trying to alter the moment that I must have needed. I missed my Mom, I missed my family. I was glad Easter came and went. I was grateful the Cross had meaning for me, and both God and my Mom shared this Easter with me.

With the passage of those Easter moments, I began feeling fairly contemplative with these rather meaningless random thoughts as we all reach for stars:

Humans are strange creatures. We say we embrace the idea of "being true to our feelings" yet when that occurs, we circle the wagons as though we can somehow keep those feelings we don't understand or accept from oozing into the circle through the spokes of the wheel. Circling the wagons cannot produce a perfectly sealed enclosure. Feelings are transitory moments that become our teachers through their movements into and out of that enclosure. Do either of us even recognize, let alone, accept those feelings?

Is not friendship defined by the limitations of your life, of my life? Is it your flaws or mine that keep distance within a friendship? I cannot answer either question without first accepting you as an individual and then deciding whether or not I can pursue a friendship within the parameters that exist. Do we even want to share the dance of friendship?

If I allow "me to be, to feel," then I must honor you with that same freedom. You can only reach for the stars if we do not hold your arms. If we continue to hold your arms, then do you not learn to reach with your heart. With which do you stretch?

Seven Months Today

Seven months today - how quickly time passes and yet, at times, it seems only yesterday.

I continue to grieve for Mother, but I am aware I have begun the healing process. As I sat in my car at the cemetery late this afternoon waiting for the rain to stop, I thought how strange that such dichotomy - grieving and healing - can exist in the same person at the same time. And yet, thinking of it in terms of Alpha and Omega or the Known and Unknown - not strange at all.

There was actually something very comforting about sitting in the car with the gentle rain cleansing every surface it touched. And then the rain stopped. I got out of the car, released the seven balloons, and watched for several minutes as they floated higher and higher, and farther and farther away. I watched as five disappeared from my sight. As I watched the last two floating together even higher, I thought of our journey together. I felt Mother's presence and knew I had once again experienced that symbolic release with those balloons. We are at peace.

I love you, Mom.