Death
My mother died today. I wasn't there. When I got to the hospital she was already dead and I went to her room with my sister and neice to sit with the thing that used to be my mother. i say 'thing' not out of any disrespect but to acknowledge the fact that my mother no longer inhabits it.
We sat around for a while feeling as if we should be saying or doing something but there was nothing to say or do.
I came home and lit candles, said a prayer to the goddess and contemplated what it was I felt I should have done or said. It wasn't really anything to do with my mother's body. I had and have nothing to say to that as it is nothing. Neither do I have anything to say to her spirit that I did not say when it was inhabiting the body... except perhaps goodbye, I hope you finally find peace.
You see on the way to the hospital, at the time she died, I was sitting on the train and I heard someone say 'I'm sorry'. There was no one there, no one in the entire carraige... except for me and my mother. She released a lot of things inside me with those two words and that is why I am hoping she finds peace. She has been carrying those words inside her since I was a child and I wish she had said them to me with her body. Never mind, that is her regret and not mine. Her spirit released her. I have no regrets, no need to forgive, no requirement to be forgiven.
But I digress. What was it I felt I should be doing? I concluded that I was straining towards the ritual, the ceremony, the due respect... the helping of the soul to find it's way. There was no candle at the foot of the bed, to mirrors to cover with sheets, no windows to open, no prayers to recite. There was nothing but a feeling of... something missing.
I think our lives are less rich for the fact that we have so easily cast off the traditions and customs of our forefathers and we are left sterile and lost feeling that something, somewhere is missing.
we have to coming of age trials, no rites of passage, no ritual and so we find different rituals to fill the need in our soul... smoking, drinking, abuse, rape, grraffiti... so many. Where are the signposts that tell us where we fit into our society, where are the little things that expect and allow us to pay respect to those who are living and those who are dead?
My mother is gone from this world now. She knows the secrets of beyond. I wonder is she weeping now that she knows the truth.
I am not weeping. I don't feel the need for it. Somewhere, somehow I feel a rightness about it. I have never mourned death, never cried at funerals. Is that a strangeness in me... who knows it is as I am
Night night Mam
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