Mother Knight

Our mothers are everything to us. They are a loving presence, a shine of encouragement, and a hero we can all look up to. They are our very own knights in shining armor, whom we look up to and take after. But there's one disconcerting flaw that we all hate about our mothers: they don't live forever.

Many times you'll hear the sayings, "live your life to the fullest" or "never miss a moment," and others along the same lines, but my grandmother taught me how to live in those moments and to embrace the days that are given to us. My grandmother would always say that she wanted to live everyday like she was ten years old. When I watched her live this way, like taking her bike rides or walking on the beach to put her toes in the water, I saw how it made her smile and brim with life. In spite of all she went through as a child, and then battling cancer in her later years, when she lived like she was ten, there was a clear change to her, as if, through all the pills, the diets, the enemas, failed attempts and half-hopes that came with her tumorous cancer, she was really living her life and not lying around waiting to die. I've taken so much from her point of view on life and time. Time is a precious thing, and instead of leaving it to pass on it's own, she seemed to take hold of her own life force and hold onto it; all to see just one more day of her grandchildren.

Watching her hard spells in life was never easy for me, and I was young and oftentimes wish I understood more than I did at the time. But, looking back at each moment I saw of her, her whole life was teaching me something new. When her cancer made it hard for her to drive, cut food, or even put a shirt on on her own, for the people she loved, she never stopped fighting to hold onto her life how she knew it could be. She drove with one arm, managed her own clothes, and carried her own chair to the beach when she could. To her, somehow these small victories meant the difference between life and death, and she never wanted to be helpless. Her efforts were never in vain, and she always came to a place where she could watch her grandchildren play on the beach in the waves, or dance with all their spirit in a recital, and even sit and have a last Christmas surrounded by so many people she loved and who loved her. From her, I learned that not all battles are fought with clashes of metal, and not all warriors ride white steeds and carry a mighty weapon. The toughest battles are the ones we can't fight with brute force, and the heartache from those extends far deeper than any flesh wound.

My grandmother was stubborn, and we all wished she would let us help her more, but when she set her mind on seeing the lives of her children and grandchildren, she never missed a chance. She taught me to fight through pain, to live your own life wildly the way you ought, and most importantly, she taught me to listen to my intuition, and open up every now and then, because true connection always requires a person to push past their own comfort zone.

She was there when I cried so much my eyes went dry. When my heart was broken, and when I was so void of hope that I didn't think anything was left for me; when I couldn't see my future at all anymore, she was there and she held me while I cried. But most importantly, she cried with me, for me, and that kind of compassion I realized was the very thing all of us need to show one another. That complete compassion and love enveloped me and held me together whenever I thought I was ready to give up, and it shielded me like a plate of armor. This is when I realized that with all she had given me, all I had learned from her, were pieces of armor I would use to hold myself together, to make my life how I wanted it to be, instead of letting others shape my life for me. And what she had given me, she also gave my mother, and the same shining knightess I had always seen in my own mother, I saw in my grandmother. But it was heart wrenching for me to see the lessons she had passed onto me, because I understood more and more how close she was to death, and how I wasn't even close to letting her go.

Mothers are the backbone to our knowledge, and the pattern continues on in grandmothers, great-grandmothers, and so on. They are the way we learn to move through life. They are there when we fall down and when we pick ourselves back up. In my own experience, no one is ever ready for their mother to die, but it is the disconcerting flaw they all possess, and we despise that they don't live forever, and we can never balance our lives perfectly together to be able to have enough time with them. So, like Knights, they pass on their sword and armor to their sons and daughters to lead the future.