Trying to find my way

My other half said the whole idea is to be honest, to peel away the layer of emotions and try to find the heart of the matter.  My cousin, who went through the loss of her mother not too long ago said to me to trust God that he’s got a plan and somehow, someday it will make sense.  Right now, it just sucks all around.  

I spent the whole weekend with my mom.  Somehow, when we are together, it doesn’t matter this thing that is trying to steal her life.  It’s us, me and her.  Like it was in the beginning.  When I was sick, I always said that she had this amazing ability to make me feel better just by being there.  I remember one time when I was sick with the flu, respiratory, sinus, and throat infection.  Doctor said to take my medication and stay under the covers until I sweated the fever out.  At some point my mother came into my room and used a cold compress to cool me down.  I remember that the touch of her hand made me feel better.  

I’ve made a lot of questionable choices regarding my relationship with her.  I feel regret for having squandered the time I had with her.  Would I have tried for a better relationship if I had known this disease would lie before us?  I’ve wrestled with this ever for nearly two months.  The conclusion I’ve come to is that because we’re at this juncture of our lives, her illness and the possibility or inevitability of my loss, we have come to a place of mutual understanding of each other.  If she were to miraculously recover I don’t know how our lives would change.  She may just revert back to her busy body self and I may just resume being impatient and selfishly childish.  Or we may forge a new relationship that doesn’t bare any resemblance to the old one.  

I got a message from a woman I consider a dear friend.  Her words brought me to tears.  I don’t think she knew the effect they would have on me.  All day I have felt restless, angry, un-moored.  I felt like a tiny little vessel being tossed in this turbulent stormy water that has become my life.  Her words seemed to be the lifeline I needed to find my way towards the shore.  The waters are still choppy but at least I’m trying to swim towards shore instead of just fighting to stay afloat.  

She met my mom once.  It was the day she brought my son into the world.  It was the day my life changed.  It’s funny how some experiences allow you to cut through the lies society tells us to believe.  In that room, surrounded by women, writhing in agony to bring life into this world, sat the woman who brought me into this world.  Seeing me give birth traumatized her.  She said she had nightmares for days afterwards.  I thought she was nuts but then I realized how much her own mother sheltered her during the moment of her birth.  

Am I wiser now than I was two months ago?  I don’t know.  I know that I sat in the hospital room with her and inside was turmoil.  I knew that no matter how I tried, I would leave everything and everyone and run to her side because I can’t bear to be away from her.  It is not enough for me to go visit her.  I just can’t do it.  In her presence, in my presence, we find shared strength.  My life isn’t “ideal.”  I am giving up my life, changing my family’s life, everything for her.  Maybe she will never know and maybe no one will ever understand the cost to me but I am willing to pay it.  I can’t do anything otherwise.  

We made the choice to raise our babies and financially we have paid the cost.  We chose to build a business, to pursue a career in writing and we are paying the price to pursue our dreams.  I know the cost to me.  I also know what my father and my brother sees when they look at me.  I am not running back home with my tail between my legs.  I have not been defeated.  I never expected God to answer my prayers quite this way.  I never thought he would require this act of sacrifice from me in this season.  I never thought that my help would come at such a great cost.  

But sitting in that hospital room, I told her I had to be with her.  She said she wanted me to be with her.  How can I walk away from what she wants?  I have never been able to walk away from a single thing she has ever asked of me.  I am doing this for her. 

So by the end of this week, I will leave behind the neighborhood I really love and move back towards her busier neighborhood.  I will have to give up my cats which I’m still struggling with.  No one will take 3 middle aged cats unless it’s to adopt them.  I am giving up the privacy of having my own place for a crowded living arrangement with my parents.  I still remember the conversation I had with my dad about perhaps moving in.  I know what he didn’t say but the relief was there in his voice.  My little brother afterwards looked at me and made some comment about contingency plan.  

I am trusting God in all things.  This is the right decision.  I am doing this because they are my parents and my presence is required.  I’m trusting God to unite me with my cats when this season is over and provide me with a home to call my own again.  I’m trusting him to help me get through this season and do what he’s called me to do.  

Someone recently commented, how am I so humble?  I didn’t know I was.  Perhaps I’m too close to myself because all I see is a daughter who’s losing her mother.  I see a woman who is slowly becoming a terrible wife.  A mother who is short and has very little patience for her children.  I see a writer who hides in her words and drapes them around her like a shroud.  Am I humble?  If I am, I don’t see how.  I am open wound, throbbing and bleeding, unable to stop.  I am an exposed nerve, ready to snap.  

Writing is my lone refuge.  It is within words that I find solace.  Funny, how after nearly two decades after I originally conceived the idea for the characters, it is my mother’s illness that has finally helped me find the inspiration and made me able to work towards completing my manuscript.  Don’t you know, the story, in the end, was about daughters losing their mother. 

Faith like a mustard seed

My mother has been finding it harder to breathe every day. 

I have spent the last few years crying out to God over some personal struggles in my life.

My dad walked into the house after church and asked my mom what does she want?  A few days ago, he said when my brother returns we were going to pray and let my mom go.  None of us can watch her in this kind of discomfort.  

I sat in a parking lot once before her hospitalization and called this thing by name and rebuked it in the name of the living son of God.  She has been covered in prayer more ways than I can count by more people than I know.  

He went upstairs to change and I asked her, “Mom, what do you want?  Do you want God to remove this thing from your body or do you want to just go?  What do you want, Mom?”

She said, “I want God to remove this from my body.  I’m tired of this.”

Well, here’s the mustard seed of faith that’s being sown.  Now we’re ready to engage in spiritual warfare for the complete healing of her body.  

God, I’m taking my faith to my pen.  I’m asking you to touch my mother and heal her.  In all things, Father, your will be done.

Mothers and daughters

A friend once said that the relationship between mothers and daughters are destined for complications.  She’s got two daughters.  My life has been built on the premise that my mother was always a part of it.  She told me that when I was young, I would stand by the gate of the house where we lived in Bangladesh between 3 or 4 o’clock and wait for her.  She said if she was late I would pace near the gate until she got home.  Up until she retired 3 years ago, I would grow anxious if she wasn’t home by 4 o’clock.  This has always been my norm.  She always came back at the same time and if she didn’t I’d grow restless and anxious until I knew where she was.  

She was close to her mother.  She confided in her mother and listed to everything her mother said.  Since her mother was my grandmother, I don’t think my grandmother was an unreasonable person.  She’s someone I quite admired and loved.  It takes a lot of courage to leave your husband and move your children into the big city and take on the role of single mother.  Her action was culturally unacceptable and I’m sure there are hardships that came with her decision.  I don’t know what she personally thought or felt but because of the choice she made, every single of her grandchildren gained the freedom to choose how we live our lives.  We got a chance because she took a chance and made a difficult choice.  She chose to give her children a fighting chance at a better life than the one she had.

I was never oblivious to this fact about my grandmother and my mother’s past.  But I could never quite bring myself to be the kind of daughter to my mother that she was to her mother.  In case you didn’t know this already about me, I don’t take well to being told what to do.  Give me the facts and figures of the circumstance and just let me make up my own damn mind.  I may surprise you and do exactly what you want.  So when I hit puberty or thereabouts, I was discovering myself.  It is at this point that I completely broke away from my mom and just flat out ignored her.  God forbid she had anything useful to teach me.  

My mother’s a sly one.  I didn’t appreciate that until I became a mother and learned to use some of that slyness on my own children.  You have to be a little tricky.  You have to always be one step ahead of your children.  It’s your job to make sure they turn out to be functioning adults who makes useful contributions to society.  Somehow, while I was busy trying very hard not to be her, I became her.  Thanks to her, despite the numerous times and faces I’ve fallen in and out of love with or had my heart broken over, it was always my choice to engage in those foolish infatuations.  Thanks to her, I was never seduced by the lies the opposite sex tells and believe me there have been more than one occasion where I’ve wanted to believe them just to see where the road would lead me.  Somehow, because of her, when I met “the one” I just knew that he was the one I was destined to love.  

When I finally moved out, I adopted two cats.  A brother and a sister.  Would you believe that the girl’s personality was exactly that of my mother’s?  She was territorial, sweet, bossy in an understated manner, and would not tolerate another female anywhere near her.  She and came to a truce of sorts.  We’ve learned to tolerate each other and staunchly stand together when she’s upset.  She sometimes affectionately lies on my foot.  

Something happened recently that made me really angry at my mother.  I thought she was insensitive and uncaring and I told her I hated her for how she hurt me to her face.  For weeks afterwards, I was so angry with her.  I hurt so much over what she did.  I silently dealt with my pain and I prayed lots.  Then one day, after much prayer, I was able to let it go.  It was a struggle that was my own.  But I think it changed something in me.  I told her that I was sorry I said that to her.  I told her that I’m sorry I got angry.  I told her that I regretted the time I lost when I could have had a better relationship with her.  She said it was ok, she had forgiven me and she knew I didn’t mean it.  She told me that she loved me.  

She also told me that when she found out she was pregnant she prayed for a daughter, a doll of her very own to play with.  I knew this.  I’ve heard this often.  Except this time, there was a ring of finality to it.  This time I saw her as more than just my mother, I saw another woman.  In that moment, she was still my mother but she was also a woman, same as me.  

Motherhood is a funny thing.  If you embrace it and the changes it brings, you suddenly discover a whole new world that was hidden from her.  All the things that make women behave stupidly towards one another suddenly disappears and you realize you belong to this secret sisterhood of shared experiences.  Without needing to you suddenly understand the joy and pain that comes with bringing life into this world.  You understand the fear and insecurities we mothers grapple with every day of our life.  When you discover this bond with the woman who gave you birth to you, it changes you both.

Somewhere in that hospital room we stopped being mother and daughter and we became two women who were connected by an unbreakable thread that was stronger than anything in the world.  I was a part of her.  I came from her.  In many ways, I find it very easy to be her.  When I came into being, her heart beat in rhythm to mine.  When I first drew breath, the arms that held me in that moment was hers.  Ever since that moment, she was my mother and I was her daughter.  When I couldn’t do for me, she cared for me.  As she slowly finds it difficult to do things for herself, it seems natural to try to do for her.  I have a feeling though, most of the time will be spent sitting by her side and writing.  

I’m content to be in my mother’s presence.  She finds comfort in my presence.  It makes me laugh when she apologizes to me for making things “uncomfortable.”  Oh mother if you only knew that every morning after my work out I walk to the showers from my locker in only my birthday suit, it’s you who would be uncomfortable.  I can imagine her shocked response.  Have I no shame?  Apparently not.  

No, mother, you’re not making me uncomfortable.  The fact that you’re heaven bound and I’m going to be left behind to miss you, that makes me uncomfortable.  The fact that I have to explain to your grandson that you’re dying, that’s uncomfortable.  The fact that I had to move back home, that’s a little uncomfortable especially since it seems like I’m going backwards than forward.  Having sex under your roof while you’re lying downstairs, speedily heading towards death, that’s going to be uncomfortable.  But you don’t make me uncomfortable.  Nothing about you makes me uncomfortable.  I cherished your presence even when I forgot that’s what I was doing.  I had the luxury to rebel because I was always assured of your love and presence in my life. 

The courage to let go

In this day and age when everyone has a cell phone to capture video and still images, it’s easy to take that everything access for granted.  I look around my mom’s house and I see photographs everywhere.  It’s like watching a moment in time captured on a piece of paper for eternity.  My father-in-law teased me about taking pictures when my son was born.  He said it was the only way I could tell that the baby was real.  I realized later that my pictures helped me transition back to work.  Pictures of my son were everywhere.  I’ve updated those photos and now both of my sons stare back at me from photograph taken at various stages of their short life.  

Saw an old friend today and talked to her for a while in my old bedroom which will be my bedroom again.  That’s the thing about an old friend, doesn’t matter how much time passes or how much experience lie in between, you pick up as if all that time and experience didn’t come between.  You don’t ignore it, just appreciate the fact that your connection to this person is so strong that the time and distance doesn’t matter.

I’ve always had a less than “ideal” relationship with my mother.  I never told her my secrets or cried on her shoulders over broken hearts, or felt the need to turn to her for advice.  In short, I always had very little patience for what I felt was her lack of tolerance for me.  As I sit beside her day after day and watch her swiftly slip away, I’m filled with so many emotions.  

I look at myself and her and I’m filled with guilt.  Each day I’m working out and my body is becoming stronger while hers is getting weaker.  I’m filled with regret thinking of all the time I missed when I could have had a relationship with her.  But the truth is that she and I are simply too alike to be very different.  Neither one of us are particularly over the top sentimental but when we love, we love with everything we’ve got.  We’re stubbornly loyal and protective towards those we love.  We push ourselves past our limit rather than admit we can’t do it.  My brother said to me a while back that I was exactly like her and I could take that however I want.  

As I sit beside her, watching her sleep sitting up in her bed (it’s the only way she can breathe easily enough to sleep) terrified that she might fall over in her sleep and crack open her face, I’m content.  My heart is bleeding in my chest and my brain hurts trying to understand this.  But I am content to be simply in the presence of this woman who gave me life, whose heartbeat echoed mine for nine months.  I’m going to miss her when she’s gone.  Hell, I don’t know how I’m going to live in her house and walk in through the front door and know calling out for her is not an option.  

I went up to her old bedroom the other day.  My dad cleaned out a lot of stuff upstairs to make room for us.  I was shocked when I went into her room and everything was gone.  All the perfumes, the accessories, lotions, the pictures, and the various knick knacks she had lying about everywhere, they were all gone.  This is the beginning of how the house will look once she’s gone.  I can’t picture this house without her or removing traces of her from this house.  

Earlier I went into her hall closet and took a look through her coats.  I have complained for as long as I can remember that this woman has too many coats.  I only ever had two at a time if I was lucky.  I’m partial to my favourite and that’s that.  I lost my coat in Connecticut earlier this year.  So I found one of her coats that might do the trick for the heavy winter days.  It’s one of those down things that reach mid-calf and have a hood with faux fur.  It’s totally not the kind of coat I would wear.  But it fits and it’ll do the job.  She just watched me while I watched myself from the mirror.  

She’ll be gone soon.  Then no one will remain who understand us.  I am convinced now that she understood me better than I understood myself.  Without her, I never would have become me.  Funny, I never thought that she would turn out be my muse.  This is me, slowly accepting that I have to let her go.  I’m accepting it, I haven’t let go yet.  I’m working on that, I just need a little more time.