In truth though, I never grieved enough for my mother at her death – at least not at the deepest level of the heart. She was elderly, sick, and reduced to the level of a small child being attended to by the kindly nurses and aides of the facility. As her child, I didn’t want to see that. It was too painful to see my mother reduced to that state of fragility, weakness, and decrepitude. As a child, she was the one whose affection I most desired and yet many a time I had felt that she couldn’t give me what I wanted. I could hold her – but could she hold me? It had taken many years for her even to say out loud that she loved me. By then, it was a tad late for perhaps an overly sensitive and anxious attachment child, like myself. After my childhood we always communicated, but could never connect deeply at an emotional level. This was to last from childhood to youth, youth to teen, and teen to adult, until it didn’t matter anymore – it was what it was. And in the midst of sudden sadness that had taken hold during my trip, I realized that it was I that had not been there for her either – just as she had not been there emotionally for me when I was young. A strong memory surfaced of a time when she had placed me in the care of a play circle in a large department store and had gone away shopping. I was very small and saw only the dimly lit center of the room surrounded by shadowy darkness. I don’t remember crying at all, but do remember wondering if she would ever come back? Was I to be left alone there, forever?
In the cold of the desert night, a stomach-turning feeling of emptiness – of deep emotional abandonment – stirred and welled-up from within. Although I so wished my mother to come and hug me – to comfort and take care of me, I was left unanswered. No celestial hug came, no warmth welled up from my soul, and there was no mother to hold me in the dark night in the midst of these strangers. Now I did cry – for being alone in the dark and cold, for not being able to grieve for her, for her not loving me enough, and for me wanting that love so much that it scarred my life in its pursuit. I felt utterly devastated. But amidst the sadness and grief, the voice and song that I had been searching for suddenly came to me, gently as a bird and without my overt knowledge. And I found myself singing softly “sometimes, I feel like a motherless child” over and over…
Freedom
“Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, sometimes I feel like a motherless child – a long way from my home,” sang Richie Havens at Woodstock back in 1969. This verse was followed by the refrain “Freedom, freedom…” To my knowledge I had never sung it before, certainly not from my soul, and only had listened to it but a few times. Yet, that was the song which my anima vestra sang. For I understood the freedom of which he spoke as my own. To be free of the fear of abandonment – emotional and physical. A fear carried so deep within the child me and that still echoed within – an unwanted souvenir of a painful childhood. Truthfully, I cannot remember when it all begin – the loss of joy, the inability to understand why someone with whom I was entrusted to in this life would evoke within me so much misery. The terror of my Teutonic father’s fits of wrath and rage flayed at my gentle child’s soul and without a mother who could prevent that I began to fall under a shadow of perennial fear. For where there’s no joy – there’s fear. I always felt that I had come into this incarnation to play in the garden of life and experience love in human form. Yet the flower of loving kindness never bloomed in my youth and my true identity and abilities became lost to a conforming false self. I learned to surround myself with emotional armor and not go too deeply into relationships, so as to limit any hurt. Yet, I hoped that with God’s help I might live a life worth living, as remote as that seemed at the time. A life filled with love and the knowledge that this incarnation was no random twist of fate, and that there is something sacred and divine about this life – and myself.
After a few minutes the tears had dried and the singing subsided, I felt my energy return and got up from where I had spent the last few hours shivering in the dark. It was over – the carnival and cavalcade of entities, the world of Gods unknown, and the piercing angst of my lost mother and mother lost. I looked up at the brilliant night sky and saw what the ancients saw, but which we do not. The darkened dome of the entire sky was inlaid with intricate Mesoamerican geometric shapes and patterns that stretched between the stars from horizon to horizon. Such hidden radiant beauty, reflected in soft white light could be seen everywhere – as if it were an artificial dome designed by some grand architect of great talent. Everywhere I looked I saw lines connecting the stars, filling the empty space in between, and creating the patterns of the constellations. And I thanked god for letting me see such hidden beauty, the sacred patterning of the universe revealed. For now, I had eyes to see – not only what I had forgotten, but what I had never known. And that child’s voice of mine sang on joyfully within for the rest of the evening. I had forgiven myself – I had forgiven her.