Mom died a year ago today…my brother Mark, less than six months ago. Daddy died two years before Mom…a dear friend and spiritual mentor close behind him. A kaleidoscope of grief made it difficult to face each death with distinction. So much change in such a short span of time made life as I knew it unrecognizable.
I once heard that losing parents is akin to watching a great library burn to the ground. My greatest resource in life is suddenly gone. I not only grieve the death of my parents, but the last remnants of my childhood for suddenly I am the new voice of wisdom. A generation has moved on, their hand reaching backwards fully expecting mine to reach forward to take the baton they are passing…whether I want it or not.
The shock wave of my brother’s death is diminishing and I find myself returning to a grief interrupted, life in absentia of mom.
Mom was my best friend, confidant, and safest haven…all descriptions incapable of conveying who she was (and in my heart still is) to me. Mom was the one with whom I was my raw self. That is to say, she overlooked a lot and withstood the abuse of my own pain. With Mom I never pretended to be more than who I was on any given day. She wanted me to feel safe, intuitively knowing I was hurting and hiding from other relationships. The thing is – Mom saw the whole of me.
She was my biggest fan and the number one hopeful that I would find my own voice. She read every word I wrote and never failed to let me know that she felt they were, well, anointed. She once told me that my writing “made an easy connection between my message and me as a person.” That meant a lot to me. I was her favorite writer, teacher, and singer of songs. We all deserve moms like this!
For many years, I’d go to visit my mom and just sleep a lot. I usually showed up at her door feeling spent. It wasn’t the length of the drive…11 hours is an easy trip for me. It was the way I lived my life. I was always going above and beyond – trying to live up to an expectation that I could never meet. I was angry, bitter, depressed. When the masks were wearing thin, I’d show up at Mom’s ready to rip them off.
Mom drew poison out of me like a healing poultice. She’d woo details of my morbid self-view onto the table and then help me to dismantle them one-by-one. I think it caused her pain, but she knew the wounds needed to be lanced and so she did.
Mom had a way of delivering me out of my hellish circle of self; she did it by simply needing me. She didn’t lecture against self-pity or use back-handed methods of correction. She knew I was too self-focused, but rather than telling me to shift my focus (causing me to feel guilty when I was unable to do so) she would just need me. She knew to draw upon the real Susan. She’d have a problem she couldn’t solve, a question she couldn’t answer, a need that required my response. She drew my focus off of myself and onto her. She’d ask me to explain a perplexing thought, what the Word had to say on a given subject, or simply ask me to sing her a song – as though only my voice could soothe her own unrest. She did it often and she did for me. I have no doubt my mother knew more than I…but she chose to need me for my sake…and that changed my life. She taught me that helping others was helping me.
Mom lived to see my evolution. She saw me walk away from depression in its most debilitating forms. She watched me make the painful transition out of a ministry position I was afraid to let go of even though I no longer fit the role. She witnessed the softening of the rough edges of my difficult relationships.
Mom, I love you and I have never thanked you enough for seeing me through. Because of you, I am a much better me. I still reach for your hand daily…and miss you dearly.
