There exists a very thin and often transparent space where we hold what was and live into what is. Holding both truths side by side and sometimes they merge and settle into one another and at other times they feel like very strange and odd bed fellows.
I have a distinct memory of sensing a panic washing over me when my first thought of the morning had not been my son, Douglas. It crushed me like a two ton truck and I wasn’t sure what to do with it? Should I feel relieved, am I forgetting him, what is this and how do I learn to maneuver between these two spaces?
This is how healing and learning to carry what was and living into the present moment begin to do their dance of merging and alchemy. I don’t begin to be able to comprehend what occurred or what happens, yet what I do know is that it made living with loss something I could learn how to bear.
Reading about how other bereaved mommas navigated and experienced this new found territory helped me immensely. One of the women a few steps further along shared how her daughter reminded her to invite her to share in ALL her day to day activities. This was a turning point for me because this was something tangible I could do and it made sense. I was not forgetting, my heart was learning how to include Douglas now, even though not in the physical form that I sorely craved, yet this felt like a beginning of something life living for me.
Douglas is included always and he is happiest when we’re all gathered because he feels as if he’s smack dab in the middle and I have no doubt that he is. We attended the most glorious May Day festival at our grandchildren’s school and I knew he was there soaking it in along with us. This allows me to not always focus on all that he’s missing and or I'm missing, yet provides a new lens of sorting out how to live into our growing and ongoing relationship now.
Invite, include, ask our beloved(s) to show us the steps of this new dance. This has been life giving for me and is it the best situation? No, yet I’ll take it because it’s what I do have and it’s something Douglas and I are learning the steps to. I’ve been discovering that we make a pretty dynamic dance duo, forever mother and son and this is where my healing happens, between these two very thin and often transparent spaces.
(Douglas was invited to this May Day gathering at our grandchildren's school. Here I am grabbing a hug with my Eden, almost age 10, before her dance.)
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