Times of Need

After watching my daughter very carefully, and making an appointment for her first thing this morning, she woke up with a fever of 102.  This is one of those moments when I would have called my mom right away, just to hear her voice, and feel her support. I missed her today.  It is these small moments, when my daughter has an ear infection, that I realize just how active she was in my life, and how much I still need her for the small things.

Angels Among Us

I believe there are angels among us,

Sent down to us, from somewhere up above.

They come to you and me, in our darkest hour,

To show us how to live, to teach us how to give, to guide us with the light of love.

(A song by Alabama)

My mother always believed that there were Angels Among Us.  She wrote us letters of this, sang us this song, and every Christmas Eve she gave us an Angel, and told us “Thank you for being an Angel in my life.”  She is now an Angel in my life.  I believe she is still hovering around, because that is my mother, and she would if she could.  I feel that I am a very closed person in relation to being able to see or feel her presence of the presence of Angels, but somehow my mom has broken the barrier on a number of occasions, making sure I know that I am loved.

Referring again to the book, To Heaven and Back, by Mary Neal, I found one paragraph fit this for me, “Lewis Sperry Chafer wrote in systematic theology, “One reason angels are rendered invisible to human sight may be that if they were seen, they would be worshipped. Man, who is so prone to idolatry as to worship the works of his own hands, would hardly be able to resist the worship of angels were they before his eyes.”

This for me makes a lot of sense.  I do know there are many good books on loss, and the principle of to heaven and back, and I honestly wouldn’t say that every paragraph in the book by Mary Neal resonated deeply with me, but there were many segments and paragraphs that I found myself clipping on my kindle that I truly saw the value.  This being one of them.

I have to life changing experiences with my mother, that will ever make the nightly news, or the email forwarding train of stories, but they are meaningful to me, and help me to understand that she is there for me, and she does love me.  I will share as they come and the impact that they had on me.

The first message from my mother was a few days after her passing.  I was staying with my sister in my home town.  Both of my sisters as well as my grandmother had expressed to me that they had been overcome with feelings of peace and love from my mother and knew that she had visited them. I began to feel slightly jealous, wondering, if maybe my mother didn’t love me as much.  One particularly difficult night, I expressed my feelings to my sister after the entire house had gone to bed.  Through tears, I said, “I just can’t find a way to get to her, maybe it’s me, but I too want to feel my mom.”  As a good sister would, she soothed me, hugged, me and we headed to bed.  My daughter Grace was 2 at the time and had been in bed for some time.  I went into the room to lay by her for a moment, tears still feeling my eyes.  She turned to me and said, “you so sad mommy?”  I responded, “Yes, honey, I just miss Mimi (which we called her).  Grace then said, “I can help you get to Mimi.” I was a little taken back, but assumed it was a child of 2 trying to tell me how to go to her house, because she didn’t quite understand.  I started to explain to her, “Well, honey, Mimi is in heaven,” When she interrupted me again, “No mommy, I can help you get to Mimi,” I cried for a second getting ready to again try to explain, when she tucked her precious little hands to the side of my face, as my mom used to do and she said, “Mommy, Mimi loves you.”  There was nothing more said, nothing needed to be said, but I knew in that moment, that my daughter was there to help me bridge the gap to my mother.  My mother didn’t leave me and only visit others, she tried but I was closed to her presence, so she used the tools that she had and that was my sweet innocent little girl, who loved her Mimi so very much.  It was real and in that moment, I knew my mother was still around, expressing her love to me and my family.

A Cyclone

The Kubler-Ross Model, commonly known as the Five Stages of Grief, breaks down feelings into five precise categories after someone suffers a loss. I know there are many more documents and articles on this subject that give acknowledgement to even seven different stages, but the five most commonly reported stages include:

Denial: “I feel fine,” “This can’t be happening, not to me.”

Anger: “Why me? It’s not fair!” “Who is to blame?”

Bargaining: “I’ll do anything for a few more years.”

Depression: “I’m so sad, why bother with anything.” “I miss my loved one, why go on?”

Acceptance: “It’s going to be okay.”

I have been feeling the words to this post for many months.  My mother passed away four months ago and I have been wanting to put into words the way that I have truly felt.  For some people, these five steps may be what they truly feel, and they may go in that very precise and organized fashion, but for me, I feel many feelings, in waves, like a cyclone.  There is nothing organized from day-to-day for me, and I don’t feel that I will ever reach a stage of acceptance-at least not as is stated here.

My mother was ill and I knew that I would one day lose her, but I truly felt like I had a lot more time.  I didn’t, it came unexpectedly and unfairly for me; and this is how I truly feel, did feel, and still feel.  The adult in me, does realize that it is a blessing for her.  Her blessing, not mine.  I know she is no longer in pain and I know that for many years she made decisions to stay for her family, for me, for my daughter.  I know this, and understand, but I am not the blessed one.

I find myself spending most of my time in the anger stage.  Who is to blame, oddly enough, I don’t blame God or someone else, I feel anger toward my mother.  Knowing she did nothing wrong, but I still need her.  I need her to help me bring my unborn child into the world. I need her to make my daughter laugh, and I need to be able to call her, whenever, and receive her sound pieces of advice.  Miranda Lambert has a song right now, that says, “But you went away, How dare you? I miss you. They say I’ll be okay. But I’m not going to, ever get over you.”  That is my heart song to my mother.  I love her deeply, but I was 29, pregnant, and I still needed my mom.

I don’t think I do much bargaining.  Sometimes I wish I could turn back time, to see her, or do things that I wish I would have done.  But in my adult heart, I do realize her blessing, and because I love her so much, I never would ask that she have to return to a life of pain.  Somewhere in my soul I know that my mother is suffering in a new way now, because I feel that she misses me too.  I think she misses my daughter.  How could she not. There has to be some longing on her part as well, to be able to make me know things she also wished she could say.  If there were anyway I feel she would bargain herself to be there for me to bring my son into the world.  I know she is around, and I will share stories as they come, but I know she would bargain, so I will let her do that for me-knowing, neither one of us, would ever get it right. This does not make me a saint, or unselfish.  Refer to the song No More Pain by Point of Grace.  I just had some understanding of what she went through.

I do feel depression, and this like everything else comes in waves.  Mothers Day was the hardest for me, because it was also her birthday.  I find that I confine myself to the depths of a book or novel when I am really sad.  If I do this I don’t have to think about her, and miss her.  I know it isn’t fair to me, or to my family, but I would sometimes rather just hide for a while.  It also creeps up on me out of nowhere.  When I hear a song, or see something that reminds me of her, or when I am filled with the need to pick up the phone and call her.  It is a deep and overwhelming depression, but mostly I just feel sad.  I am not sure in these five stages, where the “sadness” is.  I feel this more than anything.  I just miss her.  I’m sad for the memories I will never make, and that I miss the ones I have.  I took a lot of pictures, and for that I am very grateful, but they still aren’t the same is being able to smell her exotic tea tree oil, or the smell of E6000 glue when she would craft.  I have her hats that she made for me and my daughter, but I miss the feel of her hands when she hugged me, or held my face to tell me I was loved. Maybe for me, depression is sadness and it floats around me like a cloud. I miss her everyday, I love her, and I still sometimes find myself wondering if it is real.  When I pick up the phone to call and tell her something, and realize there is nobody on the other end of the line, I feel sad, I long for her, and I love her.

I am not sure about this whole acceptance piece.  I guess sure, I realize she isn’t coming back, but it doesn’t mean I like it so I get stuck in the other areas over and over again.  In the book To Heaven and Back by Mary Neal she says, (much more eloquently I am sure) that when a person suffers a true loss, it is not something that they will ever “work through” or “get over.  Instead, you just learn to work the new pain into your life and your future.  Maybe that is where the sadness kicks in.  In my personal cyclone it would be here.

These feelings swirl about me sometimes daily, sometimes weekly and I find myself realizing that is my new world.  My mother is gone.  Her memory remains but the tangible piece that is her, that I need in my life, will never be there again.  It isn’t fair to me, but because I love my mom so much, I am happy for her blessing.  As an adult I feel that, but the child inside me still screams, “I want my mommy.”