Excerpt
When my Mother died in early December 1996, I knew that one of the things I would miss most was the dialogue we had shared. My mind kept retracing bits and pieces of conversations we had had through the years. We never seemed to run out of that dialogue, always finding new ways to communicate - to share our lives. I couldn't begin to relate half of what we talked about any more than I can relate today what my daughter and I discuss when we repeat this same pattern of endless communication.
I read somewhere that a parent imparts to a child the very first language, that of emotional expression. Then comes the verbal communication and lastly, the symbolic language that teaches a child the ways in which to participate in the rest of society. Once we're locked into dialogue such as this, this human dialogue, we cannot live well without it. Louise Kaplan, in her book, No Voice Is Ever Wholly Lost, says that when this dialogue is silenced by death or separation, we are by our very natures compelled to invent various life scenarios to reconnect with the one who is perceived as lost. She writes, "Long after the return of logic and reason, long after we rejoin the world of the living, we are still attached to our lost ones. The human dialogue, that which makes living a life worthwhile, goes on. In the absence of this dialogue, we are lost."
So I knew when Mother passed away that the attachment to her would not end. The human dialogue would continue as long as I was alive. I also knew I would sorely miss her my whole life long. The pain of losing her was profound and it was absolutely necessary to my rejoining the world that I seek and find ways in which to continue to dialogue.
I believe it is essential that women tell their stories to one another and share their histories. We women are so many tales wrapped up together. As women, we have watched each other's struggles as we grow and change and expand to become whatever it is we strive to be. We play so many varied roles in our lives, and we are constantly altering ourselves as we continually take our turns in our respective generations.
Often without being fully conscious of what is happening, we watch as we are born, as we live and learn and then as we pass on to future generations what it is all about. Sometimes we forget that those who have gone before us have lived through similar experiences and have survived just as we now survive. If we are fortunate, we will have experienced tender nurturing, and, then, in our turn, we hand this down to others. If we have come from abusive families, we need to find ways to share that as well, aiding others by the examples we give when we have begun to heal. We make the mistakes and suffer for them. But we continue to grow and learn and stretch ourselves to be the very best we can be. We hope and we despair, and out of all that we give hope and courage to others who follow. But we do need to tell our stories in the first place. It is what our women-scapes are all about.
And yet, this is not only a woman's story, for who amongst us has not had to face the death of a loved one, or if we have not must need do so at some point in time? Surely, my mother's dying is not unique. Facing death is one of the most universal of all conditions in that sense and one of the most common experiences we all share. But it is precisely this universality that makes our understanding of our humanness most obvious. We need someone to walk with us and to say, "Yes, I understand. We need someone to stop and wait a while with us, perhaps commiserating and offering, "Yes, I, too, have been there in that dark place." For it is right there, in the midst of the commonality of it all, that we are able to grow in compassion for one another and come to know the true meaning of community. It is what binds us all together.
I believe that sorrows can be borne far easier if we are able to put them into some sort of a narrative or tell a story about them. So compelling or not, I knew that I needed to write about what my mother and I had experienced in the journey we walked together. After she died, it was a way of gathering my thoughts, certainly as a catharsis and a way to heal, but also as a way of passing on the legacy this one woman left behind.
Early in life I had been taught that God truly is our refuge, and peace and the kind of happiness that fulfills us - makes us complete - are deeply and solidly rooted there. So I put my faith to work and tried to practice the presence of God in my life as I grieved and remembered. And I remembered very well.
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