life ever transitioning
by Judy
May 1, 2017
A week ago was my mom’s birthday. It has now been one year and ten months since she died. I lit a yahrzeit candle that burned all day and through the night until the early morning hours. I don’t know why, but I find it very comforting to have my mom’s candle burning - a sense that she is with me. When I woke up in the morning, this line was running through my head, “Her light has gone out and one day my light will go out too.”
One day the light of the whole world will go out.
The brevity and beauty of life is always somewhere in my consciousness these days.
I still do miss her. It’s not the same in- the- guts kind of missing that I experienced in earlier days or a missing that just finds it so hard to believe that she is not here, but nonetheless it’s still missing. As time goes by and I speak to friends and even strangers passing through my life, I am acutely aware how much this is just part of everyone’s life and I am no different.
I wonder sometimes how my mom coped with so much loss in her life, She didn’t speak about it very often. In her last years of life, when I spent so much time with her, I do think it softened her or allowed the softness that was always there to fully penetrate.
Yes, I am still in mourning. I still feel like phoning up my mom and just saying hello, hearing her familiar warm voice greeting me. “Hi honey.” She was always happy to hear from me. I want to share my life with her and I want to get her very down-to-earth advice on certain decisions I need to make. But she is gone and I can only surmise what she would say. It’s not as if I always followed her advice, but often it was very sound.
And so I live with an ache that comes and goes. It certainly is not always there but when it is, it feels like a vacuum… like a reaching out that is suspended in air…like trying to speak and no words come out. It’s an ache…then it’s just a matter of time and inevitably it passes.
At the same time that this is part of who I am, there is also a sense of renewal, of new life. It’s not just because it’s Spring although no doubt the emerging of wet warm green life helps a lot, but also there is a natural process occurring; a process of movement. While we still breathe and are awake, we can’t help but move and change.
I am currently in the process of looking for a new home that will be larger and accommodate more visitors and more activity. It’s both exciting and scary. I’ve never been a particularly brave human being, but I’ve “jumped” anyway in spite of my hesitations and that seems to be happening now.
I am painting more, learning, reading, exploring new ways to be involved and engaged with others, and jumping into actions connected to climate change. There is also an acute awareness of how much we need to expand our vision in all directions: our vision and understanding of where we are, where we need go and what is possible.
I certainly feel like I am in some kind of transition as I near the young/old age of seventy.
The whole world feels like it’s in transition; like it’s aching to move to another level of consciousness and care. And the Universal values of love, communion, creativity and deep concern for others still hold the greatest weight.