Reflection on My Mother’s Life

A friend’s recent inquiry prompted me to question how well I really knew my mother. We all have beliefs about our parents that ultimately, regardless of how well phrased, come down to our sense of being loved. My friend asked if mother had gone through a mid-life crisis. It was difficult to answer. Mom is always so calm, so quiet, so not in crisis. She doesn’t express herself openly. As I thought about it I realized how very different I am and wondered if mother’s lack of expression, what appeared to be a lack of love, had propelled me upon my path of self-discovery and radical self-expression.  

 

No one escapes life’s ups and downs, so mother couldn’t have either. Looking at her though, it appeared that she did. Even when Dad died, she carried on; she didn’t cry. This steely woman was my model for how life is lived. She internalized life, so much so that it was, and still is, hard for me to see what is really going on. Realizing now, that my understanding of mother is vastly incomplete, I question how well my sons know me. We know our version, the interpretations that validate our beliefs. We don’t, nor can we, truly know another. Absorbed in understanding ourselves, we rarely see the truth surrounding other’s lives.

 

Only recently did I come to learn that mother was born without tear ducts and is unable to cry. Hearing those words broke my heart and opened me to a new understanding – that I didn’t know her at all. I couldn’t imagine not being able to release the pent-up frustration and emotions that inevitably accompany life. When at last I understood, it explained so much.

 

You would think if you were unable to cry you would learn to jump up and down or scream and yell – anything to shake off the tight, constricted energy of loss. She didn’t. Perhaps that is why she holds her Bible close. Those skills would be helpful now. She is about to lose her leg from the knee down. There’s no medical explanation. The veins carrying the blood to her calf and foot just quit working. She doesn’t cry or scream. She hasn’t a physical outlet, no way to dissolve the energy of tragedy. There must be a million screams residing within her.   

 

As a child watching my parents, I unconsciously made decisions about who I would be, about what I would copy and what I would change. Those unspoken agreements were foundational for the pact I made with myself to honor self-expression. We each do this. Our pacts vary, but they are pacts none-the-less. Honest, self-aware expression, what I now call radical honesty, grew in importance over time, until it became the key tenet of my life.

 

Gratitude is thick and rich for this reflection on mother’s life. It has given me new appreciation of her challenges and choices, and a greater understanding of how her life experiences now flow within me. Yes, they flow in apparently different directions. Yet, they flow from the same origination point, the same human experience. When we look only at our personal experience, rather than the magnificently divine and so much bigger picture, we miss connecting to the mystery of what is actually stirring here. So much more is happening than we realize and it’s rarely what we think. Anything is already possible; marvels of growth and expansion are taking place. Gifts are offered to each of us this day. Will you see them? Will you seize them?

 

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