Mother

In 2009 I received a phone call from my mother, Helen Irene was her name. She had been experiencing deep pain inside her body for some time, she thought it was an ongoing bladder infection which she addressed by phone calls to her doctor who prescribed urinary tract medications and lots of cranberry juice; time passed, she lived with the pain, a day came when this pain reached a point of unbearability, finally she was able to convey to her doctor the severity of this pain and actually get in to see her doctor and be examined..why it took so long had to do with Her not wanting to complain, ask or demand that she needed help or was suffering, she was not assertive about her own needs, especially when it came to her own body. Suffering in silence was something she was used to. Getting help was not.

Upon examination and tests, the results came back. “Stage 4 bladder cancer”…she was sent to a specialist surgeon for that part of the body, he recommended that by surgically removing the tumor she might be able to live longer. She agreed.

My sisters and I sat in the dimly lit waiting room at Saint Mary’s Hospital drinking watery coffee from a vending machine..The surgeon appeared suddenly in the doorway still in his green surgical gown and surgeons skull cap, shaking his head as he approached us looking down apologetically; ”It's a shame she had not acted sooner, I couldn't remove the tumor, it was too large, Im sorry.”

She did all the usual deadly and toxic recommendations in an attempt to live which made her even more sick and out of it..I asked her midway through these sickening treatments if she'd consider stopping the chemo and just enjoy her time left, reluctantly she did agree to suspend treatments for about 3 weeks, she was unhappy about this decision, breaking into tears one day it came out she thought that I wanted her to die ...she went back on chemo believing it would save her life. She had no appetite and was exhausted sleeping most of the time, her complexion cast a grayish green aura which made her look otherworldly,her mind a blank, she was very ill.

She went into a two week remission before Christmas as the chemo rounds were finished. Her doctor declared her “Cured” she was so relieved and happy she began making plans for the future speaking excitedly about all she hoped yet to do in her life with travel to unseen places and the joy of seeing her granddaughter Sage Irene Graduate from High School.

We decided as a family to celebrate her “return to life” by going out for a special Christmas Eve supper at a chinese restaurant in downtown Grand Rapids. It was a festive occasion, most of our family that could be there gathered around a large circular table with a white tablecloth, each place marked by a red paper placemat depicting the chinese zodiac. Everyone was decked out in Christmas attire, smiling and laughing as we ordered expensive sugary maitis topped with little pink paper parasol picks speared into a chunk of pineapple and a maraschino cherry. It was nice seeing her eat and with such Zeal, this being her first real meal after almost a year of Chemotherapy. She was ravenous.

I remember looking across the table at how small and shrunken she had become. She appeared to be lost in the dark wood chair like a lifesize porcelain doll someone had propped there, the gray page boy wig sat on her head like a hat instead of hair, she hated it. Only 4’11 and never more than 120 lbs.under healthy conditions she now was at 79 lbs, her clothes overwhelmed her emaciated body.

I could see large snowflakes falling gently, silently outside the Hong KIng inn's tinted windows, the red lights of the sign “Hong Kong Inn” blinking on and off while casting a glow in the fresh snow falling on the sidewalk. Have yourself a merry Little Christmas”played in the background. It was magical, it was our last time, maybe our first time of being together in complete ease.

The decline began. The remission ended and the pain came back with a vengeance. Her oncologist doctor at the Lemmen Holton Cancer Treatment Center in downtown Grand Rapids informed her she had taken all the chemo treatments that were recommended and allowed, he conveyed how sorry he was, that he'd tried his best…She repeated to others “In terminal.”

Four months later on March 22nd she awoke in from a night of labored breathing with blood trickling slowly out of her nostrils, my sister Georgie who had been staying with her, called early in the gray drizzling morning hours: “You’d better come over now she's not doing well”...We called Hospice, when they arrived a couple hours later they said that within that day she would leave this world and what to expect as her body shut down, they were very kind making sure her morphine IV was working to keep her out of pain.

She died gently. I got to hold her hand and sit by her side for a good part of the day. She was funny as she kept wanting to get up and go somewhere then trying to take off all her clothes; she was preparing to go home the same way she came into the world, naked.

A few visitors came and went. Mom didn't have many friends left. She was shy. Her kids were her friends. It was just myself,my husband Bruce, daughter Colleen, sister Georgie and her daughter Sage who was only 7 then. Georgie had moved in with Mom before Sage’s birth and stayed for some years afterwards until Georgie finished up respiratory therapist training and until she met her future husband David and moved into their own home. Mom was Sage’s caregiver during those early years, the two of them formed a very close bond of love.

We sat with Mom the whole day. Sage at one point climbed up into the hospital bed, laying close to her Gram, crying softly, snuggling closer, pleading with her to please not go. Mom was unconscious, it was heartbreaking to witness. The Hospice lady said it was important for Sage to be there and be a part of what was happening..

As the evening approached I watched mom become very restless, she began to raise her arms upward. She was smiling while looking beyond us with an unfixed gaze, she seemed to be encountering something or someone we could not see, the other side waiting and welcoming her return? Maybe.

Suddenly she opened her eyes, completely aware of all of us in the room. She seemed very present as she looked at me as if waiting for something, then I said “ You can go now Mom” she replied “You mean I can die?” I smiled a little and told her I loved her “yes” I whispered. We both smiled one last gentle smile to each other.I placed my hand on her arm, reached down and kissed her forehead.Slowly and very quietly the breath of her being just wound down until it stopped. She was gone. She was 76.

I still miss her.

Below are a couple excerpts from my memoirs: “Lineage of Listeners'' about my mother Helen. I feel that writing for me is a completion process for this stage of later life I have been in these last several years, a Calling to complete and release my stories of the past at last. This process continues to be a way for the final clear up of confusions and resolution of the knots of karma with my family. A feeling of finally being done with all repressed stuff and unbearable truths, to have the inner power to let go and live my own life. I have been able to make peace with her and myself. It took 5 years before I stopped grieving her death, awakening one day realizing I was no longer in pain at her absence.

I understand better now the insanity of her family life, the events and choices she went through as a helpless child, the terrible binds and traumas she suffered through from birth till death. How she just didn't get to know herself. Self help and support groups were not really available so much for her generation. She got trapped in patterns and re-creations imprinted from her childhood which included with multiple abusive and alcoholic husbands who abandoned her. She gave birth to 7 children when she was still so much a child herself, angry and unequipped to mother, she felt resentful of her fate. She was greatly burdened as a mother and a wife. She got stuck, just like her mom and her own Mothers mother were stuck too and that stuckage became my burden to deconstruct and heal.

I decided 11 years ago to begin to invest in creating and leaving a good-enough written legacy with pictures for my own adult children if they're interested. I'm sure they have some mixed feelings about me as their Mother the same way I have had about my mother.The bonds with one's parents are the most complex of all to unravel.

My Mothers death left a huge hole and wad of knots in me, not because we had a great relationship but because of its confusing and detrimental impact it had on myself and my siblings. My mother qualifies as one of my life's most”Extreme Teachers”. I believe there is no value in being granted the grace of gratitude without suffering and no wisdom is given without first going through serious difficulties of pain and suffering. It's said we pick our parents before coming into a body, I don't know if that's true, I just know I am feeling a sense that Helen Irene was the perfect Mother for me. I bow to her and all she taught me. It has taken 70 years to become grateful to her.

“Her voice

She told me everything she thought or felt, some of it I wish she hadn’t. This need of hers to tell me her life in intimate detail was set early on between the two of us, it overtook the relationship, the way we were together. She was the mother officially, I was the mother unofficially. A personal assistant comes to mind to fits my role as the eldest daughter. A tone was set for my life to come. I would be the listener, advice giver, helper and fixer upper. Listening and problem solving was who I became for her.

“Mom could manage money quite well. She paid cash for everything she could. While she didn't have much money she had no debt and paid off everything and still managed to save money. She was a child during the great depression, this made her to feel aware of” not enough-ness”and the need to save everything, the origins of hoarding were seeded. Her father was against using credit. She had a way with money that worked on the one hand but limited her in scarcity beliefs her entire life. She kept canned goods in her underwear drawer and rarely bought anything that wasn't on sale. She always had $500.00 hidden under the forks and knives in a kitchen drawer in case an emergency should arise.. On the flip side she was attracted to get rich schemes, weekly lottery tickets and investing in the stock market.She believed wealth would be the answer to her happiness. She didn't have the patience or stomach for stocks and got burned on an assortment of other failed investment experiments. Thrift was her mantra, shopping for deals and estate sales were her passion.Reliving the past through collecting stuff was her way to enjoy and escape her existence. She had a good eye for beauty, art and possessed an innate sense of interior design. At an unconscious level I see I became and acted out for her a lot the parts of her she wasn't willing or able to do for herself. Like having a career, marrying someone more decent, having friends and a social life etc, manage to appear to have it all together, even though it's a lie..... instead I went the route of Over functioning, just the opposite side of the same coin of confusions of who one really is and unrecovered trauma.

The Dump; “ My mother told me stories about a particular house her family lived in during the 1930’s off Stafford street in SE Grand Rapids that backed up to a dump. She would describe her wanderings to this place alone as a little girl, her face lighting up in the telling as she’d reminisce how she’d happily search amidst the rubble for possible treasures until she found them. Excitedly she’d discover abandoned broken toys,orphaned dirty half naked dolls, her face softening as she’d describe nostalgically how she’d lug her finds back home which might include assorted discarded furniture pieces such as a stool or table with broken legs, maybe a cracked lamp with a stained shade, chipped dishes etc..Her early training as an Interior designer was established. She explained how she would start imagining how these treasures would fit into her hidden hideaway home under the porch...This was a place of Magic, freedom and peace where she could be herself, not be bullied or made fun of for her shyness and where her things were hers alone. Where she didn't have to be near what was happening above her with her chaotic family. She created a safe container, a kind of a womb-like sanctuary to exist in. She needed this to survive what lived above.

About the Art: “Maidens in the Flowers” By Helen Irene. Medium/watercolors

“A Pastel Dreamland” By Helen Irene. Medium/Acrylics

“The Altar Box '' by Mary (Bhavani) I felt inspired some years after my mothers passing to create an “altar container” to house some of her notes, cards, and photos. This felt like a sacred honoring for us both. In went many of the interesting “little collected items' ' she had found so magical in her treasure hunts throughout her life. I felt she would appreciate my adding her gold locket, a gift from her first and true love Bob Surell, whom she lamented losing her entire life.

The medium is a found cigar box from a smoke shop. I began decorating the lid with some of her vintage ric-rac trim, Goodwill estate sale beads unstranded from necklace and antique button holders on the corners.

The picture of the Lily in the center symbolizes transcendence of life, which I believe through her many trials and then death she went through with quite a bit of pluck and courage. She did achieve Success in all unrecognized and difficult ways a goddess does when it gets set out to take the Heroine's journey. Inside the box I lined the bottom with a piece of vintage fabric, she loved pictures of women and Goddesses, as did I, so a beautiful one of another age grace’s the bottom. In the photo on the top inside lid we are shown together some years back happily making Christmas cookies. It reads; “My Mother, My Friend, My Teacher”

There is so much more I could say on this topic of my Mother...but for now I will close by saying through her I have entered the world and because of who she was and wasn't I have this life and time to make sense of it all.I am not wasting the opportunity she gave me. I feel I have gone deep into this unraveling of knots of anger and confusion to try and understand her, of course it leads to my own self- realizations of my Self. I have reached neutral. It feels like peace.I am free.

“We’re all in the same boat-radiant and broken” Sy Safransky

“Paradox is the Essence of Living.

Perhaps the greatest paradox in the human psyche is our longing for union,

For peace, for solutions, though experience has taught us that it is our

Conflicts and our failures.which are in fact our points of growth.”

-Irene Claremont De Castillejo