Life Comes Without Instructions

What is the measure of a life? What gives it worth? What’s it all for? What is the point?

To celebrate a life is to lose it to death. It is inevitable. We are all hanging onto the dash between our birth and death dates. Hoping to make a mark, something to be remembered for. Is that in the things we do, or the people we know? I believe it is in the people we touch. Lives that we are mingled with. Not what we aspire to be, but WHO we aspire to become.

As we are struggling through the past and current months of illness with mom, I have a feeling of dread for what is looming. She is very unwell. I am heartbroken feeling her fade. And although we have had a wonderfully long and enjoyable life to love her in, I am lost. Her body and mind seem to be preparing her for what is coming. And yet, I am lost. I keep remembering all the days, years, moments that she was available to me, and my siblings and our children, and I feel lost. How do you prepare yourself to let go? To remember the tender times, and know there are very few left. I know that I am being selfish, and I know that there is a life beyond. She prepared us for that, but today, I don’t care. I want to rewind and see her standing at the counter, laughing and teasing. I want her to call me and say, “where have you been, why haven’t you called me?” I want to go shopping, or out to dinner, or just play cards at her table. I want more time……

I heard a song by Ed Sheeran, he wrote a song about his grandma, from the perspective of his mom as her mother passed. It speaks volumes for me.

“Oh, I’m in pieces, it’s tearing me up, but I know a heart that’s broke is a heart that’s been loved, so I’ll sing hallelujah, You were an angel in the shape of my mom. When I fell down you’d be there holding me up, spread your wings as you go, and when God takes you back he’ll say hallelujah you’re home”

Her life. Her expectations, disappointments, experiences, successes, failures, her attributes and all of her flaws, made her who she is. It made us who we are. So in reflection, if I had to tell you what I aspire to be, or what I aspire for my children, I want to be like my mom.

Flawed and imperfectly beautiful. She did her best and raised a family, stood by her husband of nearly 63 years. She struggled and learned to survive, never giving up. She encouraged us to do what made us happy.

Did she do it all right? No. None of us do, but she aspired to, and THAT is all that matters. She lived the best she knew how evolving into the woman she needed to become. She taught us through her success and failures that we would always be enough and that no matter what life throws at us, we are not and would never be alone.

So, love with all your heart. Forgive and find forgiveness. Cherish the life you’ve been given and the people who surround and support you.

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A/N

I wrote this in 2017, while I was still lucky enough to have my mother. I have learned in the last several years that time brings us pain and peace, joy and healing and the opportunity to be better. To give and receive love.

Enjoy it while it is.