Thursday, April 30, 2009
One of the more provocative essays...
...in Meghan O'Rourke's Slate series on the death of her mother and its effect on her life is this one entitled Finding a Metaphor for Your Loss. Like a somewhat more literary version of women's magazines self-"help" quizzes, the essay prompted me to think about how I "visualize" my mother, now that she's gone.
I have what I call an analogy for what happened to her when she died (what happens to all of us when we die) and my thoughts about the chasm between the dead and the living. I formed this analogy a few years ago and my mother's death didn't change it. It doesn't, though, explain my imaginings when I consider whether my mother, or something of her, remains here, more than in my thoughts (an explanation which I, too, like O'Rourke, find tiresome).
Unlike O'Rourke and her friend (cited in the article), I haven't placed my mother in anything so concrete as the wind and the water. For awhile I thoughtlessly assumed that I identified her with this house, then, more specifically with the living room, which became the heart of our house and home during her life. When I began serious work on the yard after her death, though, one of the hardest aspects of being "out there" was that my habit of keeping my being trained on the house during her life when I was out in the yard was not only no longer necessary after her death, it made me feel her loss all the more because, well, each time I automonically listened to our home I confronted her absence, which was, depending on the day, anything from mildly depressing to paralyzing.
Soon after reading O'Rourke's essay I began to observe sightings of units of existence, you know, animals, states of weather, that brought my mother to mind. Crows, for instance. We have a noisy, prominent population of large black crows in this area in which both my mother and I delighted. When she was awkae and I heard crows cawing around our home I'd rally us outside to check out their activities. During the last few years of her life, when she was no longer interested in literally venturing outside but continued to imagine herself going and being outside, I'd spot them through one of our many windows and maneuver her, with her walker or in her wheelchair, to a prime observation post. I don't, though, I noticed a month or so ago, imagine that she is a crow, or even with the crows (which she may be, you never know).
The same situation occurred when our first herd of spring deer meandered into our front lawn this year snuffling for tender shoots. When Mom was alive, observing the deer was such a treasured activity that I'd awaken her for an appearance (unlike for the crows). But, I've also noticed, I don't imagine that she is visiting me as one (or more) of the deer.
A few days ago when I was indulging in some late day, early spring baking (best to get it in before the weather turns warm and the heat of the oven, even in the deep evening, becomes irritating), I noticed that I am, indeed, imagining my mother here, with me, just below my conscious awareness, most of the time, but with me. I imagine her, in her rocker, immense, shot through with thought-form but without substance, behind me and a bit to the right of my right shoulder. Sometimes I imagine she is attending to me. I haven't talked to her much, yet, so her attention is on what I'm doing, not on what I might say to her. Sometimes she is simply there, here, continuing to experience the world as part of the her-and-me team that had its beginnings long before we became companions. At times she's thinking her own thoughts and I'm wondering about the direction in which those are wandering. At others it seems that she and I are thinking in tandem and she's adding her considerations to mine. Sometimes I believe she is observing me...and wondering...
When I am aware of her, I notice that I experience myself immense and gauzy, too, so neither of us is dwarfing the other, although I tend to think of her as extending "above" me, "beyond" me to the right...as though she has achieved a state that lies implicit but not yet possible within me.
As I've mentioned in previous posts, I also imagine her as cavorting with relatives and friends who share her state...but, when I imagine her with them that is different than imagining her with me. Not that I consider her absent from her over-my-right-shoulder perch when thinking about her with those who died before her and who waited for her, probably without a lot of patience, knowing her relatives, but with ardent hopes that she would "keep at it" as long as she could. I imagine them saying to her, under cover of dreams and her timeless states when she was alive, "No hurry, dear, yes, we're anxious to be with you, again, but you'll get here, don't rush it." Her family believed in the life long and well lived...even those who lived neither long nor well believed in it.
The more I think about my post-death considerations of her, the more aware I become of times, when she was alive, that I imagined her with me in much the same way, when I was running errands while she slept. Or, perhaps it was that I was concentratedly with her; staying tuned, knowing (which often happened) that my ulterior State of Alert, focused in her direction, would signal me if she was rousing and I needed to put aside this or that errand for another one of her sleep periods and hurry home.
So, nothing, and everything, has changed with her death. I cannot be with her in any way that makes sense to me, rather like an unborn child who is of her mother but doesn't know of her mother. It's incredibly frustrating, since I know of death in a way that unborn children likely don't know about birth, but I continue to imagine her with me...with a state of me, that state that floats like a baby in the womb of post-birth life, having no idea what awaits me once I burst through this physical state but knowing that, whatever else awaits, I will, again, be able to experience being in touch with her in some unknown way because we will have, finally, shared the fate of all the living.
I have what I call an analogy for what happened to her when she died (what happens to all of us when we die) and my thoughts about the chasm between the dead and the living. I formed this analogy a few years ago and my mother's death didn't change it. It doesn't, though, explain my imaginings when I consider whether my mother, or something of her, remains here, more than in my thoughts (an explanation which I, too, like O'Rourke, find tiresome).
Unlike O'Rourke and her friend (cited in the article), I haven't placed my mother in anything so concrete as the wind and the water. For awhile I thoughtlessly assumed that I identified her with this house, then, more specifically with the living room, which became the heart of our house and home during her life. When I began serious work on the yard after her death, though, one of the hardest aspects of being "out there" was that my habit of keeping my being trained on the house during her life when I was out in the yard was not only no longer necessary after her death, it made me feel her loss all the more because, well, each time I automonically listened to our home I confronted her absence, which was, depending on the day, anything from mildly depressing to paralyzing.
Soon after reading O'Rourke's essay I began to observe sightings of units of existence, you know, animals, states of weather, that brought my mother to mind. Crows, for instance. We have a noisy, prominent population of large black crows in this area in which both my mother and I delighted. When she was awkae and I heard crows cawing around our home I'd rally us outside to check out their activities. During the last few years of her life, when she was no longer interested in literally venturing outside but continued to imagine herself going and being outside, I'd spot them through one of our many windows and maneuver her, with her walker or in her wheelchair, to a prime observation post. I don't, though, I noticed a month or so ago, imagine that she is a crow, or even with the crows (which she may be, you never know).
The same situation occurred when our first herd of spring deer meandered into our front lawn this year snuffling for tender shoots. When Mom was alive, observing the deer was such a treasured activity that I'd awaken her for an appearance (unlike for the crows). But, I've also noticed, I don't imagine that she is visiting me as one (or more) of the deer.
A few days ago when I was indulging in some late day, early spring baking (best to get it in before the weather turns warm and the heat of the oven, even in the deep evening, becomes irritating), I noticed that I am, indeed, imagining my mother here, with me, just below my conscious awareness, most of the time, but with me. I imagine her, in her rocker, immense, shot through with thought-form but without substance, behind me and a bit to the right of my right shoulder. Sometimes I imagine she is attending to me. I haven't talked to her much, yet, so her attention is on what I'm doing, not on what I might say to her. Sometimes she is simply there, here, continuing to experience the world as part of the her-and-me team that had its beginnings long before we became companions. At times she's thinking her own thoughts and I'm wondering about the direction in which those are wandering. At others it seems that she and I are thinking in tandem and she's adding her considerations to mine. Sometimes I believe she is observing me...and wondering...
When I am aware of her, I notice that I experience myself immense and gauzy, too, so neither of us is dwarfing the other, although I tend to think of her as extending "above" me, "beyond" me to the right...as though she has achieved a state that lies implicit but not yet possible within me.
As I've mentioned in previous posts, I also imagine her as cavorting with relatives and friends who share her state...but, when I imagine her with them that is different than imagining her with me. Not that I consider her absent from her over-my-right-shoulder perch when thinking about her with those who died before her and who waited for her, probably without a lot of patience, knowing her relatives, but with ardent hopes that she would "keep at it" as long as she could. I imagine them saying to her, under cover of dreams and her timeless states when she was alive, "No hurry, dear, yes, we're anxious to be with you, again, but you'll get here, don't rush it." Her family believed in the life long and well lived...even those who lived neither long nor well believed in it.
The more I think about my post-death considerations of her, the more aware I become of times, when she was alive, that I imagined her with me in much the same way, when I was running errands while she slept. Or, perhaps it was that I was concentratedly with her; staying tuned, knowing (which often happened) that my ulterior State of Alert, focused in her direction, would signal me if she was rousing and I needed to put aside this or that errand for another one of her sleep periods and hurry home.
So, nothing, and everything, has changed with her death. I cannot be with her in any way that makes sense to me, rather like an unborn child who is of her mother but doesn't know of her mother. It's incredibly frustrating, since I know of death in a way that unborn children likely don't know about birth, but I continue to imagine her with me...with a state of me, that state that floats like a baby in the womb of post-birth life, having no idea what awaits me once I burst through this physical state but knowing that, whatever else awaits, I will, again, be able to experience being in touch with her in some unknown way because we will have, finally, shared the fate of all the living.
Labels: Afterlife Metaphors, Death Analogies, Slate
