Conversation with my mother on the 25th anniversary of her death

Good morning, Mama*. I can feel you here, on the couch, a being who is both present and takes up no space or weight. I think in the past you have needed me – or I thought you had needed me – on these death anniversary days. I thought you were an ancestor who was not yet well in spirit.**But perhaps it was more that I was not yet well with you, and with ancestors overall.

 

Anyway, regardless of who was not well then, here we are now – both well in spirit. It’s sad to me still, that this is how we are able to be together now, but I am grateful. Grateful grief.

 

I want you to know how much I love you. You have gone far beyond what I could have even conceived of – pun intended. I had no idea. I knew you were brilliant – I told you you were. I am sorry I said I thought it would only bring you pain.

 

You didn’t know, Mama. You didn’t know because, in your experience, and in the experience of your boomer generation, and the experiences of women and gender non-conforming folks before you, brilliance DID bring a lot of pain. Especially spiritual brilliance, the light of the taste of enlightenment, when the cultural container for it in North America was poisoned so heavily – more heavily than now – by whiteness and patriarchy and peaking capitalism.

 

You are right. I didn’t know. Your dad and I were both brilliant and it was part of what killed us so young – I am so grateful you have had the support to make it shine.

 

I have Sherryl to thank, and Gloria, for helping me to understand that while you were both against organized religion, you were both deeply spiritual, especially you, Mama. And you showed me that in nature without calling it that – your silent, steady reverence.

 

I am sorry for my part – I know I’ve said this, I know you know this – that I couldn’t see you beginning to shine before you died. I am also so grateful I can see it now – thanks to your friends and also thanks to time and my own healing.

 

And the healing you have done for us – me, Dad, Eleanor, Grandma, Bapa, Nana, Pat, Big Mimi. You helped us be free and we are here for you.

 

Thank you for coming with Scotch and your Ivans and Dad to get Drala after he died.*** That was so incredibly helpful and healing. 

 

How can I honor you today?

 

By taking care of yourself. By nurturing all you have birthed and preparing for more birth. By knowing we love you and receiving that love. By letting go of our ashes. By being in the big snow with the birds. 

 

By typing up this exchange so others can see that healing can happen between an aggrieved adolescent daughter and her disturbed menopausal mother, even after a sudden death division, even if it takes a quarter of a century of the mother being dead.

 

Mama, would we have healed this way, had you lived?

 

Let’s not ask those what-ifs.

Let’s just be grateful for what is.

-------------------------------------NOTES--------------------------- 

 The images posted, of her responses, were written through my non-dominant hand.

*I never called my mother Mama when she was alive; it has become my ancestor name for her

Her full name was Tricia Leanna Reilly Hall

 

**”well in spirit” comes from Daniel Foor - www.ancestralmedicine.com

 

***In a pandemic grieving ritual lead by community leaders of Ancestral Medicine just a few days after we had to humanely euthanize our cat, Drala, on December 16, I was able to hand Drala’s spirit over to Mom and Dad, Scotch, my childhood cat, and a league of Ivans, all black cats my mom had growing up. Here is a post I wrote after Drala died.

For further posts on my relationship with my mother over the years, especially on the anniversaries of her birthday and death, see here, here, here and here.